If you are an individual, meaning you are not equipped with a business NIPT, but during 2025 you generated income worth over 50 thousand lek, after renting out an apartment or villa through the Airbnb or Booking platforms, for the tax administration this income is considered untaxed, therefore it must be declared on the Annual Personal Income Declaration (DIVA) form, and will be taxed at 15%.
Therefore, income through social networks or other foreign platforms will be declared on the same form as income from employment relationships.
Accountants explain that in DIVA, the remaining income after commissions will be declared, which, after being manually noted by the declarant, will be taxed at 15% automatically by the system through the declaration.
In practice, many declarants of untaxed income generated through foreign platforms are encountering uncertainty about declaring the amount. Whether the amount should be declared before or after the commission paid to the platform.
The general fiscal interpretation in DIVA refers only to "gross income from rental", or as "other gross income not mentioned above generated outside the territory of the Republic of Albania", while specifically in DIVA, no deductions for platform commissions are provided for the income of these individuals.
In DIVA, it is specified as gross income from rent. Accountant Armand Mala tells Monitor that individuals must declare the income remaining after commissions, as this is also the amount that is reconciled with payments collected through the bank.
Declaration in DIVA is also necessary for income generated from social networks such as Facebook, Instagram or YouTube, which are also considered untaxed, as individuals are not registered with NIPT.
So, despite the fact that the income is generated through foreign platforms, it is considered untaxed income of an individual who is not equipped with a NIPT. In this case, he is obliged to declare it through DIVA, for which he will pay a 15% tax.
According to the announcement published earlier by the Tax Administration, it was specifically requested that "every person who has received income as an individual from platforms such as: Meta, YouTube, Google, Airbnb, Booking, etc., and has collected it in the bank or through PayPal, must declare it on the DIVA-2025 form, by the deadline: March 31, 2026".
Accountant Armand Mala explains that in the DIVA form, untaxed income worth over 50 thousand lek per year from rent generated through foreign platforms must be reflected in Section 6 "Renting income".
In DIVA, income through social networks according to Mala must be declared in section (21) "Other gross income not mentioned above generated outside the territory of the Republic of Albania".
"In both cases, the value of the unreported income must be manually entered by the declarant. The tax is 15%. The e-Filing system automatically calculates the tax, after the amount is manually entered by the declarant. The declared amount will be taxed in full. In this case, the law does not provide for expense deductions.
"Expense deductions, in the law "On Income Tax" are provided only for income from employment, where according to article 22, point 1, letters a, b and c with a value of 360 thousand lek per year and 600 thousand lek per year according to the income bracket. In DIVA it is reflected in column 24. As well as expense deductions, such as compensation for each dependent child under 18 years old in the amount of 48 thousand lek and expenses for the education of children with a maximum value of up to 100 thousand lek, determined in columns 25 and 26 of DIVA," explains Mala.
When did the declaration of untaxed income begin if it is over 50 thousand lek per year?
The obligation to declare income over 50 thousand lek that an individual has earned during the year, for which no final tax has been withheld at source, including through international platforms, was included as an innovation in 2025, with the completion of DIVA 2024.
The changes meant that even if an individual did not earn a total annual income of over 1.2 million lek from employment (since only if the gross annual income from employment is over 1.2 million lek does the individual have an obligation to complete DIVA), but had earned untaxed income of over 50 thousand lek per year from rent, YouTube, etc., the obligation to complete DIVA arises.
So they may not have earned a total income of over 1.2 million lek, but they have earned over 50 thousand lek and are not taxed, in which case they will have to declare DIVA.
Such income may be: Income from rental, when the tenant is an individual not registered as a commercial taxpayer, income generated outside Albania, etc.
Meanwhile, due to the growing demand of foreign tourists to stay in daily rental apartments, as rental prices are cheaper than traditional accommodation structures, their number continues to increase.
In 2025, a total of 134 million euros were generated from leasing in Albania
Data from AirDNA, the analytical unit of the rental platform Airbnb and Expedia (and in some cases Booking.com), made available to "Monitor", shows that across the country, on average in 2025, 26.3 thousand apartments were rented through the rental platform, Airbnb, up from 21 thousand the previous year, with an increase of 25.3%.
According to data from AirDNA and Expedia, a total of 134 million euros were generated from rentals in Albania in 2025, a record level ever recorded in the country. Compared to the previous year, revenues increased by 23.4%.
However, some of these individuals are not registered with the tax authorities, which has prompted the tax administration to take several measures to record and tax this activity carried out in the informal market.
To identify individuals who rent out properties for daily rent and formalize them, taxes began identifying them through the commissions paid by them on the Booking platform.
Earlier, the tax administration claimed that the Directorate of Investigation is drafting a pilot project to record this data through tax representatives in Albania who rent out properties on the Booking or AirBnb platforms.
The project envisaged that the number of landlords identified through paid commissions, for formalization, would be cross-referenced with a series of data, including declarations in the Annual Individual Income Tax Declaration (DIVA) for 2024, with the aim of withholding 15% of the withholding tax on untaxed income./ Monitor
