The bearing capacity of submerged shallow foundations is analysed on the basis of the recent Italian Building Code. For the long term analysis two procedures are discussed, based on two different expressions of the drained bearing capacity: by “procedure A” the effective vertical stress acting at the base of a foundation is compared with the drained bearing capacity in terms of effective stress, whereas by “procedure B” the total vertical stress is compared with the drained bearing capacity in terms of total stress. Short term analyses of submerged foundations in fine-grained soils are also discussed. For both drained and undrained conditions the above procedures are applied to two submerged foundations in a soil with the same effective stress state. By numerical examples some possible methods of analysis are presented, which differ in the computation of design ultimate load (resistance) and/or design action. On the basis of the results presented in this note the following conclusions can be drawn: – for long term analyses, if the drained bearing capacity is calculated in terms of effective stress – procedure A – the results agree with soil mechanics fundamentals, provided that the same partial coefficients are applied to the forces due to water pressures (single source principle). – the Approach 1 of the Italian Building Code implicitly respects the single source principle and it leads to a more conservative analysis in drained conditions (long term) and a less conservative analysis in undrained conditions (short term). When the long term analysis is based on drained bearing capacity in terms of total stress – procedure B – the results are generally misleading. Procedure B is recommended only when it is combined with the Δ-method, which compares net stress and net bearing pressure considering the vertical stress acting at the foundation level. The Δ-method is found to be reliable in all cases: in fact, for long term analysis the level of safety is the same regardless of the procedure, whereas for short term analysis only the results obtained by the Δ-method are not conflicting with fundamentals of soil mechanics.