Registro IVA acquisti: Italy's purchase VAT register explained

If you have a partita IVA in Italy, or a business with Italian VAT obligations, your commercialista works with the registro IVA acquisti: the register of the invoices you received. It is where the VAT you can deduct each period comes from, so its quality directly affects your VAT settlement.

What the purchase VAT register is

Article 25 of Italy's VAT decree (DPR 26 October 1972, no. 633, "Registrazione degli acquisti") requires the taxpayer to record in a dedicated register the invoices and customs bills (bollette doganali) for goods and services bought or imported in the course of a business, art or profession. This includes invoices issued under the reverse-charge rule of article 17, second paragraph (Normattiva, art. 25, as of October 2026).

The timing is tied to the VAT deduction: an invoice must be recorded before the periodic VAT settlement (liquidazione periodica) in which you exercise the right to deduct its VAT, and in any case by the deadline for the annual VAT return for the second year after the year you received it. That last wording is the text in force since 12 August 2026.

The 2027 change: the new consolidated VAT code

Italy has rewritten its VAT rules as a consolidated code, the Testo unico IVA (Legislative Decree 19 January 2026, no. 10). Its article 171 says the code applies from 1 January 2027. On that date article 25 of DPR 633/1972 is repealed, and the purchase register continues in article 88 of the new code, again titled "Registrazione degli acquisti" (Normattiva, D.Lgs. 10/2026, as of October 2026).

The content stays essentially the same: invoices and import customs summaries for goods and services bought or imported, recorded before the settlement in which the deduction is exercised. If your commercialista mentions "art. 88", this is the same register.

What an entry contains

Both the current article 25 and the new article 88 list the same data for each registration:

For invoices covering operations without VAT that fall under the cases referenced in the law (article 21, paragraphs 6 and 6-bis of DPR 633/1972; article 72, paragraphs 6 and 7 of the new code), you record the reason why VAT does not apply and, where relevant, the legal provision, instead of a VAT amount.

Who keeps it and who is exempt

The obligation falls on the VAT taxpayer ("il contribuente" in the law): businesses, self-employed professionals and companies with a partita IVA.

The regime forfettario (flat-rate scheme) is the main exception for small businesses and freelancers. Under Law 190/2014, paragraph 59, flat-rate taxpayers are exempt from paying VAT and from all other obligations of DPR 633/1972, except numbering and keeping their purchase invoices and customs bills, certifying their takings and keeping the related documents (Law 190/2014). The Agenzia delle Entrate summarises it the same way: flat-rate taxpayers do not record issued invoices, takings or purchases, and they do not deduct the VAT on purchases (Agenzia delle Entrate, as of October 2026).

How your commercialista uses it

The register is the bridge between your received invoices and the VAT settlement. Your commercialista can import the entries into the firm's accounting software, checks that each invoice has the right rate split, and adds anything the register cannot know, such as partly deductible costs. Common problems are invoices registered after the settlement in which their VAT was claimed, supplier names that do not match the invoice, and a single line for an invoice that mixes several VAT rates.

How Bonro produces it

Bonro exports a CSV purchase VAT register for your commercialista: a semicolon-separated file with one line per receipt, containing the date, a protocol number that continues across exports instead of restarting, the supplier, the taxable amount, the VAT rate, the VAT amount and the total. You can check and correct every field before exporting.

If you are in the regime forfettario you generally do not need this register; the generic CSV and PDF summary are available on every plan. The Registro IVA export is part of the Pro plan; see Bonro's pricing for details.