The Italian government plans to crack down on landlords who don’t pay taxes on short-term rental income, such as through platforms like Airbnb, Reuters reports.

Forza Italia, one of Rome’s ruling coalition parties, said in a statement after a key meeting on next year’s budget that the executive led by Giorgia Maloney plans to introduce a mandatory national identification code to track short-term rentals.

“This code will expose the income of those who rent apartments without declaring them. This will bring more money to the state coffers, which will reduce the fiscal burden,” Deputy Prime Minister Antonio Tajani, leader of Forza Italia, told reporters.

Tajani also said the government plans to increase the tax rate for landlords who rent more than one apartment. Italian law currently provides for a 21% tax on rental income.

But the Italian government is now reportedly planning to levy a 26% tax on the income earned by landlords who let out more than one property.

Economists estimate that this second measure, prepared by Meloni’s management, is likely to bring more revenue to the state budget, as the number of owners who do not declare their rental income through Airbnb and similar platforms is believed to be relatively small in Italy.

This situation is connected with the fact that the local authorities of Italy can impose large fines on the owners who do not declare these incomes and do not pay the mandatory city tax on tourists. In general, according to the estimates of the Italian government, the new measures will bring additional revenues to the budget of one billion euros.

Airbnb is at the center of a growing number of complaints

Airbnb has come under fire in recent years for allegedly fueling skyrocketing rents in some of the world’s most popular travel destinations.

Residents and local authorities in cities such as Paris, Amsterdam and Barcelona, ​​to name just a few, argue that short-term rental of many homes is drastically reducing the available housing stock, resulting in astronomical prices for those living in such megacities.

In Italy, authorities in Florence announced earlier this month that they would ban new Airbnb rentals in the city’s historic center, with Mayor Dario Nardella citing the Meloni government’s slowness to regulate short-term rentals.

“In 2016 we had just under 6,000 apartments for rent on Airbnb, today we have almost 14,378,” he justified, adding that monthly rents in Florence increased by an average of 42% during this period.

Florence’s measure would not apply to owners who already have licenses to rent properties on Airbnb, but only to the issuance of new permits. But the authority has offered tax breaks to landlords who already offer these types of tenancies if they switch to regular tenants.

The move comes just a month after Venice, another Italian city popular with tourists, decided to take another measure in the context of the huge number of visitors it faces each year: the introduction of an entrance tax to the city.