If you do not have a TV at home and you care about unnecessary charges, it is possible and advisable to cancel the television license fee of the Italian public broadcasting agency, Canone RAI, which is automatically charged to the electricity bill – currently €90 per year.

In this article, we bring you the brief summary to do so in under a minute, and a full explanation if you need it or if you just enjoy reading manuals.

Overview

You can request to cancel this charge from all the electricity bills registered in your name, only if you do not possess any television receiver device in any of the corresponding apartments. A regular computer or laptop is not considered to be a television receiver according to the law, only an actual TV is subject to the fee.

To do this, the legal requirement is only to complete Part A of the personal declaration form.
Option 1: You can do that easily through the website, if you are registered to the CIE or SPID digital identification system. Option 2: Alternatively, do it in the good old way, by actually filling and signing forms, and sending them via email without any confirmation response or any other feedback whatsoever.

Unfortunately, you should submit this every year by the end of December for the exemption for the upcoming year, or in case the year already started, by the end of June to cancel the charges for the last six months of that year. We have set a digital calendar notification for eternity to the beginning of December of each year.

It worked for us, and the Canone RAI charge has never resurrected.

Option 1: Online – 1 minute

If you have already registered to the CIE or SPID digital identification system, the form is almost automatically filled out for you, so you can easily submit it online.

Brief Summary

Login ➔ “Invio dichiarazione” ➔ “Inizia” ➔ “Avanti” ➔ Check the first option ➔ “Avanti” ➔ Save a copy before submitting ➔ “Avanti” ➔ “Invia” ➔ Save confirmation ✔

Full Steps

1. Login to the tax office website using CIE or SPID:
   https://telematici.agenziaentrate.gov.it/EsenzioneRAI/jsp/intro.jsp
2. Click “Invio dichiarazione” from the short list, or simply click on this link:
   https://telematici.agenziaentrate.gov.it/EsenzioneRAI/home.do?metodo=init
   
3. Leave only section A marked:
   “Se si intende dichiarare che in nessuna delle abitazioni…“
   (i.e. there is no television set in any of the homes in which there is an electricity bill under your name)
   and click on the button “Inizia” at the bottom of the page
   
4. Click “Avanti“
   
5. Click “Avanti” here as well
   
6. If you wish, you can save the filled form, and then click “Avanti” again
   
7. Click “Invia“
   
8. If all went well, you will see a confirmation message
   
9. You could print the official confirmation notification from your messages list:
   https://apptel.agenziaentrate.gov.it/RicevuteComunicazioniWeb/ricevute
   This is a PDF document of a letter titled:
   “RICEVUTA DI PRESENTAZIONE DELLA DICHIARAZIONE SOSTITUTIVA DEL CANONE DI ABBONAMENTO ALLA TELEVISIONE PER USO PRIVATO (mod. RAI17)“
   

Option 2: Email – 30 minutes

If you have not yet registered to the CIE or SPID digital identification system, you can submit the signed form via email along with front and back photos of your identification document (e.g. an Italian ID card).

If you don’t intend to register to the digital identification system, it is recommended to keep a copy of the completed form, so that next year you would only need to update the date and easily resubmit it.

The form to fill out could be downloaded from the tax office website:
https://www.agenziaentrate.gov.it/portale/documents/20143/296387/Provvedimento+24+febbraio+2017+Canone+Rai_ENTRATE_dich_sost+RAI_mod.pdf

You can fill out the form using this free PDF editing website:
https://www.pdfescape.com/account/unregistered/
(Load PDF from Internet)

Email it to the address:

cp22.canonetv@postacertificata.rai.it

with the email subject:

DICHIARAZIONE SOSTITUTIVA RELATIVA AL CANONE DI ABBONAMENTO ALLA TELEVISIONE PER USO PRIVATO – Dichiarazione sostitutiva di non detenzione

and the email body of the message, that you should fill in with your details:

Buongiorno,

In allegato a questa e-mail sono una copia del mio documento di identità e il modulo “DICHIARAZIONE SOSTITUTIVA RELATIVA AL CANONE DI ABBONAMENTO ALLA TELEVISIONE PER USO PRIVATO”.

In attesa di vostra conferma,
Nome: ______________________
Indirizzo: ________________________________
Codice fiscale: ___________________________

Let us know in the comments if the Canone RAI fee was waived from your electricity bills as well.
Good luck!

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