Does fuel also count towards expenses?

The question certainly didn’t come up just now, not least because the idea is that you’ve spent a whole year collecting invoices with tax number to take advantage of all the applicable deductions. But it is common for doubt to be accentuated when validating invoices. In the end, where do the fuel expenses on the E-invoice? And do they qualify for a deduction?

Despite the State’s initiatives to encourage citizens to depend less and less on fossil fuels, gas station invoices, as long as they have their tax number, are also included in the E-invoice and can be deducted from the IRS.

Still, it is important for you to know that there is room for some discrimination: different fuels have different rules and they can even be declared differently, depending on whether they were used for personal purposes or in the exercise of activity as a self-employed person.

In this way, being informed about the rules of these invoices is a way to make the most of the possible deductions and avoid some mistakes that, while not being expensive, can prevent you from earning a few more euros when the time comes to submit the annual tax return. IRS.

E-Invoice and Fuel: questions and answers

The answer to this question is a resounding “yes”. As with any other expense, invoices relating to the purchase of fuel that have your taxpayer number enter the E-Invoice and are considered by the Tax Authority in calculating the taxpayer’s deductions.

Not belonging to any of the other categories of deductible IRS expenses — such as health, education, real estate, homes, maintenance of motor vehicles and motorcycles, accommodation and catering, hairdressers, veterinarians, gyms or social passes — the fuel expenses enter where everything else enters in the E-Fatura, that is, in general family expenses of taxpayers.

For the purposes of calculating tax benefits, fuel bills are included in the general family expenses category.
This category allows a deduction of 35% of expenses incurred by any member of the household up to a limit of 250 euros (500 euros per couple).

So, regardless of whether you bought fuel to get around on a daily basis or to work on your own, you can always declare these expenses.

If, at the time you made the expense, you asked to include your tax number on the fuel invoices, these will appear on the E-Invoice as pending and awaiting validation.

To fit them into general family expenses, you just have to go to the E-fatura portal, authenticate yourself with the credentials you use on the Finance Portal and, on the right side, where the icons of the possible categories appear, choose the last square, which is the “other” option.

In E-Fatura, the “other” option is for all general family expenses that do not belong to any other category, regardless of the product or service to which they relate.

For IRS purposes, fuel bills may become irrelevant if your household overheads are already significant.

In reality, these invoices are added to all the others related to day-to-day expenses, such as supermarket, clothing, gas, electricity or electricity, for example. And considering that you can only benefit from a deduction of 35% of these expenses up to a limit of 250 euros per member of the household (500 euros per couple), if you already have a lot of invoices in the general expenses category, then the fuel ones won’t make much difference.

However, the case changes when there are few expenses to declare in this category. If we bear in mind that to reach the limit of 250 euros of deduction, each member of the household has to spend at least 715 euros, then fuel bills can be of great help in reaching the amount of expenses that entitles the benefit maximum income tax.

Let’s start with the way you declare fuel at the IRS: even if you are an employee, if you have open activity as independentwhen validating your invoices, the E-Fatura system will ask you if each fuel expense has been incurred in a personal capacity or in the exercise of independent activity.

In reality, the difference will not be any from the point of view of the classification in the E-Fatura: fuels are always general family expenses. However, there may be differences in the type of benefit.

This is because invoices relating to expenses related to professional activity may be considered for VAT deduction purposes, when taxable persons are included in the organized accounting regime or in the simplified regime and exceed the limits that allow VAT exemptionbeing required to deduct and settle VAT and submit VAT returns.

For the purposes of deducting fuel expenses related to the activity, Finance makes the distinction between types of fuel.

In the case of gasoline there is no right to deduct VAT. But when it comes to diesel, LPG or natural gas, it is possible to deduct 50% of VAT borne, as established in paragraph b) of paragraph 1 of Article 21 of the VAT Code.

This benefit is greater when the expenses with these fuels are associated with the following vehicles, and in these cases the VAT is fully deductible, not just 50%:

• Heavy passenger vehicles;
• Vehicles licensed for public transport, with the exception of rent-a-cars;
• Machines that consume diesel, LPG, natural gas or biofuels, as well as machines that have a registration number assigned by the competent authorities, provided that, in any case, they are not registered vehicles;
• Tractors with exclusive or predominant use in carrying out cultural operations inherent to agricultural activity;
• Goods transport vehicles weighing more than 3500 kg.

Article originally published in July 2019. Last updated in January 2023.