The change in the 2026 ETS tax qualification after the Revenue Agency Circular: an operational analysis between commerciality tests, temporal effects and governance of entities.
By Paolo Sardo
From 2026 the tax reform of entities registered with RUNTS is no longer theory: it is applied law. And with it comes a concrete question for those who administer an ETS: does your organization still know where it fits fiscally?
The Revenue Agency Circular no. 1/E of 19 February 2026 addresses precisely this: the moment in which an ETS changes its tax qualification and the concrete consequences that derive from it in terms of obligations, accounting and governance.
It is not a document to be archived. It is an operational tool and the starting point for understanding whether your organization is exposed to risks which, in most cases, can be prevented. For the regulatory framework of reference, see also the regulatory framework that made Title X operational
The first change of perspective concerns the rules of the game. On the tax level, the Third Sector Code has introduced a different logic from that which for years has governed ordinary non-commercial entities. The reference discipline is no longer the elastic and often not very transparent one of the art. 149 of the TUIR, but the special one contained in the articles. 79 and following of Legislative Decree no. 117/2017.
The same Circular recalls that, for ETS, the rules of Title II of the TUIR continue to apply only to the extent compatible and that, among those no longer applicable, art. 149, superseded by art. 79, paragraphs 5, 5-bis and 5-ter, of the Code. In other words, the legislator has removed the ETS from the old scheme of loss of qualification, built for the majority of non-commercial entities, entrusting the verification to an autonomous, typical and quantitative criterion.
For the ETS the topic is no longer addressed in impressionistic terms, asking whether the entity appears more or less commercial. It is addressed through a comparison between measurable economic quantities: on the one hand, the proceeds from activities of general interest carried out commercially and those from other activities carried out in the form of a business; on the other, the revenues that the system brings back to the non-commercial area.
The Circular insists precisely on this point: the verification of the commercial or non-commercial nature of the ETS is, essentially, an accounting operation. It may seem like a cold formula, but it marks a cultural turning point. The center of gravity shifts from the abstract definition of the entity to the concrete interpretation of its economic flows.
Saying that the verification is accounting might make one think of a linear, almost automatic operation. It's not like that. The point is not just to add up the revenues, but to understand where they come from and what nature they have.
Not only classic revenues are included in the count, but also public contributions, donations, membership fees and fundraising: all resources that do not arise from a market exchange but which weigh in the calculation. And activities carried out for free or under favorable conditions also have an impact, because they still have an economic value even when it does not translate into a proportionate income. It's not just how much comes into the cashbox that counts, but how much what the organization produces is worth.
This changes the way we read the numbers. We no longer measure only the financial flow, but the real weight of the overall activity. And it is this perspective that allows us to understand whether an organization sustains itself mainly thanks to resources consistent with its mission or through activities closer to the market.
The result is that what determines the qualification is not the breadth of the activity, but the composition of the proceeds. An institution can operate on a large scale and remain non-commercial if its revenues are predominantly institutional in nature. However, it can slip into the commercial sphere almost without realizing it, if revenues from business activities grow silently.
The reform, read correctly, does not punish the growth of the entity. It forces it to make its economic structure transparent. The legislator's choice is clear: to distinguish between entities that finance their mission mainly through resources consistent with their solidarity function and entities that, while remaining ETS, are mainly based on activities carried out with business logic.
The regulation of sponsorships and fundraising deserves specific attention, because in practice it often generates uncertainty.
The Circular clarifies that sponsorships, although they constitute commercial activities, are not relevant in the commerciality test pursuant to art. 79, paragraph 5 CTS, if carried out in compliance with regulatory criteria. Similarly, ongoing fee-based fundraising may remain taxable, but does not affect the overall tax qualification of the entity.
The rationale is clear: the legislator wanted to protect some self-financing instruments, preventing the entity from being dragged into the commercial sphere just because it seeks resources to support its mission. It is a choice of legal policy even before that of tax technique. In the third sector, the search for funds is not an anomaly, but a condition for survival. The law recognizes this.
It is the point at which the Circular is most demanding, and the one that generates the most surprises in practice.
The ordinary rule is this: the ETS 2026 tax qualification changes starting from the beginning of the tax period in which the entity exceeded the commercialization threshold. Not from the moment he notices it, not from the closing of the budget. For entities whose financial year coincides with the calendar year, it means that the tax effects affect the entire year that has already passed.
Concretely: an entity that closes its financial statements in December and discovers that it has exceeded the threshold already finds itself in the new qualification from 1 January of that year. The system works with a substantial feedback logic: in the final balance, the outcome of the relationship between commercial income and non-commercial income is observed, but if the threshold is exceeded, the fiscal effects affect the entire financial year. There is no margin for reaction: there is only the possibility of having foreseen it.
Connecting the art. 79, paragraph 5-ter with art. 87, paragraph 7 of the Code, the Circular introduces an important distinction between substantial effects and accounting obligations.
From a substantial point of view, the loss of the qualification of non-commercial entity produces effects from the beginning of the tax period in which the entity acquired that new nature. In terms of compliance, however, the entity has a period of three months, starting from the occurrence of the conditions, to adapt its accounting system: inventory, chronological records, balance sheet, register of depreciable assets and ordinary accounting required for commercial entities.
This step deserves attention. The legislator does not simply say that, if the entity exceeds a certain threshold, it must change its regime. It says something more challenging: the fiscal life of the entity does not necessarily coincide with its administrative perception. The entity may realize late that it has become commercial, but tax law considers that transformation to have already occurred in the financial year in which the accounting data was consolidated.
The three-month window is not a moratorium on change. It is a tool for bringing out in an orderly manner an effect that has already been produced. Attention shifts from mere compliance to prevention: it is not enough to close the budget correctly, the composition of economic flows must be monitored throughout the year.
The transitional phase attenuates, but does not cancel, this setting.
For the first two tax periods following the one in progress on 31 December 2025, the change in qualification operates from the tax period following the one in which it occurs. The Circular also clarifies the case of entities with operations at the turn of the year: the transitional two-year period must be calculated on the basis of their tax period, not the calendar year.
This is an important corrective, introduced to accompany the effective launch of Title href="https://mct.tax/2026/02/04/terzo-settore-novita-scadenze-e-opportunita-perche-e-il-momento-di-parlarne/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">the main innovations introduced by Legislative Decree 186/2025
It is a point that is often misunderstood in the comments and it is worth clarifying it explicitly.
The Code distinguishes the civil-institutional profile from the fiscal one. An entity can remain regularly registered with the RUNTS, continue to pursue civic, solidarity and socially useful purposes and, at the same time, take on the role of a commercial entity on a tax level. To understand what it means to be registered with the RUNTS and what effects it produces on a legal level
This step is decisive, because it forces us to abandon a moralistic reading of commercialism. Becoming a commercial ETS does not mean betraying the third sector. It means, more simply, that the economic structure of the entity is mainly based on activities carried out in a business manner. It is a fiscal qualification, not a legal excommunication.
The more useful question is not whether commercialism should be avoided at all costs. The real question is another: does the organization know where it is going? If the growth of commercial revenues is the result of a conscious strategy, the change in qualification can be managed and even planned. If, however, overtaking occurs due to inertia, without adequate analytical accounting, the problem is not the rule, but governance.
The art. 79, read together with the Circular, forces administrators to measure their own economic identity, no longer to tell it only in statutory form. This is where the accountant returns to the center: not as a simple compiler of obligations, but as an interpreter of the balance between mission, sustainability and fiscal risk.
What happens when an ETS that has assumed a commercial nature becomes non-commercial again? The Circular recalls the art. 79-bis of the Code, which regulates a concrete problem: the goods purchased during the commercial phase have accrued latent capital gains. If the entity changes its nature, those assets pass to the institutional sphere and in normal conditions this would generate immediate taxation.
The mechanism of the art. 79-bis allows the capital gains referred to in art. not to immediately contribute to the formation of taxable income. 86 TUIR, when the goods cease to belong to the commercial sphere and are used to carry out the statutory activity for the exclusive pursuit of civic, solidarity and social utility purposes.
The benefit, however, is not definitive. The capital gain remains suspended and resurfaces if the asset is sold for consideration, compensated or used for extraneous purposes. The logic is coherent: the qualification step is sterilized when the wealth remains within the mission of the entity, taxation is recovered when that asset falls within the ordinary circuit of economic availability.
The art. 79-bis does not only serve to regulate a theoretical hypothesis. It serves to make the reorganization of institutions fiscally sustainable. Think of an already operational entity that registers with the RUNTS and redefines the perimeter of its activity, or an ETS that over time reduces the entrepreneurial component and returns to a non-commercial prevalence. Without this rule, the transition could generate an immediate fiscal cost that would discourage the reallocation of assets towards the institutional sphere. The legislator's choice is rewarding but conditional: it helps those who maintain coherence, it recovers tax if that coherence fails.
A basic fact thus emerges. The change in qualification is not an accident, but an institution that photographs the concrete evolution of the institution. The Third Sector Code, in its fiscal part, does not want to fix the tax identity of the ETS once and for all. Rather, it wants to subject it to continuous verification, based on what the organization actually produces, collects and organises. From this perspective, Circular 1/E of 2026 carries out an important operation: it translates the reform into applicable language, confirming that the commerciality test is not an abstract clause, but a procedure for reading economic data.
The operational message is clear: the 2026 ETS tax qualification cannot be managed in the final balance. It is governed throughout the year, with precise instruments. Four concrete actions.
In the new Third Sector tax law, the question is no longer whether the entity formally has a non-profit face. The question is whether its economic balance is still consistent with the fiscal grammar of the non-commercial entity. For this reason, the change in qualification should not be feared as an anomaly, but governed as an indicator. The most mature entities will not be those that will remain non-commercial at all costs, but those that will be able to read the direction of their flows in time, consciously deciding whether to monitor non-commercialism or accept, without misunderstanding, the entry into the tax system of the commercial ETS.
It is here that the reform stops being a technical question and becomes something more profound: a new way of reading the entities, not for what they claim to be, but for how they live, operate and support themselves in the time.
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