The direct answer: the next deadline for Italian car tax is always counted from the previous expiry, not from when you paid. Paying late does not move the anniversary.
The bollo auto (formally tassa automobilistica) is an annual regional ownership tax on registered vehicles: it is owed by whoever owns the vehicle on the register, whether or not the vehicle is driven. For a company fleet it is one of the three deadlines — with the roadworthiness inspection and insurance — that turn into a fine if forgotten.
The rule
The bollo renews every 12 months from the previous expiry.
If the deadline was in March and you pay in August, the next deadline stays in March — not August. You paid late, but the starting point for the calculation is still the old expiry, not the payment date.
The logic: the bollo covers a 12-month period that starts from the previous expiry. Paying late means part of that period went by uncovered, but the next period always starts where the previous one ended.
A worked example
Your vehicle’s bollo expired on 31 March 2025.
You pay it on 12 August 2025.
When is the next one due?
The calculation starts from the previous expiry: 31 March 2025 + 12 months = 31 March 2026.
Not August 2026. Not 12 months from the August when you paid. The next deadline is March.
If two years are overdue — say you pay in August 2026 a bollo that expired in March 2025 — the calculation moves forward one year at a time until the proposed deadline falls after the payment: the starting point becomes March 2026, and the next deadline is March 2027.
The day shrinks to the end of the month
The bollo does not expire on the 15th or the 20th: it always expires at the end of the month. When you add months, the target day is reduced to the last day of the target month if that day does not exist.
An example: the bollo expires on 31 January. Add 12 months and you get 31 January the following year — fine. But if the deadline is 31 March and you add one month, you land on 30 April, not on a 31st that does not exist. The day adjusts itself.
In practice this hardly changes yearly calculations, but it explains why two bolli that expired on the same day a few years ago can expire on different days today if short months got in the way.
When you do not have the previous expiry
If it is the first time you record the bollo for a vehicle — one just bought, or one joining the fleet with no history — the next deadline is counted from the payment date.
The same applies if the previous expiry is unknown: the payment becomes the starting point, and you count 12 months forward from there.
Why this matters in a fleet
With a single vehicle, you remember the date or see it on the receipt. With ten vehicles, with car tax expiring in different months and someone who already paid late once, the calculation becomes a source of silent errors: you put the wrong date in the sheet, and the following year you think you still have time when the deadline has already passed.
The rule is simple — always start from the previous expiry — but applying it consistently across several vehicles is where a manual reminder starts to fall short.
Watch out for the exception: the roadworthiness inspection follows the opposite rule and restarts from the date it was carried out, not from the previous deadline. Two opposite rules on the same vehicle are why calculating from memory goes wrong.
For a complete picture of every deadline — inspection, insurance, servicing, tyres — the guide to company vehicle deadlines in Italy gives the calculation rule for each.
Note
The calculation rule on this page reflects how the renewal of the regional vehicle tax works, as checked on 31 August 2026. Amounts and payment channels depend on the Region where the vehicle is registered: check your Region’s rules before paying. This guide is not tax advice.
Frequently asked questions
If I pay the bollo late, does the next deadline move?
No. The next deadline is always counted from the previous expiry, not from the payment date. A car tax that expired in March and was paid in August expires again in March of the following year.
How is it calculated when several years are overdue?
The calculation moves forward twelve months at a time from the last known expiry, until the resulting date falls after the payment. Paying in August 2026 a car tax that expired in March 2025, the starting point becomes March 2026 and the next deadline is March 2027.
When does the bollo of a newly bought vehicle start?
From the payment date, because there is no previous expiry to start from. The same applies when a vehicle joins the fleet with no history and the previous expiry is unknown.
On which day of the month does the bollo expire?
At the end of the month. When months are added, the day is reduced to the last one that exists in the target month: an expiry on 31 March moved by one month becomes 30 April, not 31.
Written and fact-checked by The Busy People. How we check our sources