Italian tax returns for expats and international clients: worldwide income, foreign assets, foreign tax credits and the election of your regime, prepared and filed on time.
.jpg)
If you have moved to Italy, own assets here, or elected one of Italy's special tax regimes, the annual return is where everything you planned either works or quietly falls apart. It reports your worldwide income, declares your foreign assets and claims your foreign tax credits, and it is where the election for your regime is actually made. We prepare it, file it, and take responsibility for it.
If you are tax resident in Italy, you are taxed on your worldwide income and you file here, even if every euro arises abroad and has already been taxed there. Residence is a question of fact: registration with the Anagrafe, domicile, habitual abode or physical presence in Italy for more than half the year will each do it.
Non-residents file too, but only on Italian-source income: rent from an Italian property, gains on Italian assets, work carried out here. A non-resident who lets a flat in Rome has an Italian filing obligation whether or not they have ever set foot in a tax office. If you are unsure which side of the line you fall on, particularly in the year you arrive or leave, that question comes first.
Most internationally mobile clients file the Modello Redditi PF, the full personal return. The simplified Modello 730 is quicker and can deliver refunds directly, but it cannot handle many of the situations our clients have: complex foreign income, full foreign-asset reporting, business or self-employed income. Note the order: in Italy you pay before you file. Missing the payment date is a different failure from missing the filing date, and under some regimes a late payment is fatal in a way a late filing is not.
The part of the Italian return that catches foreigners hardest is not income at all. The RW section requires Italian residents to report foreign assets held at any point during the year: bank and brokerage accounts, shareholdings, property, crypto, life policies with a surrender value, even assets held through a nominee or a trust of which you are the beneficial owner.
It is a reporting obligation, not a tax, and it applies whether or not the assets produced income. Penalties for omission run from 3% to 15% of the undeclared amount, and from 6% to 30% in privileged-tax jurisdictions. Because it reports balances rather than profits, an account that earned nothing still carries a penalty measured against its balance.
There is an important exception. Under the lump sum tax for high-net-worth individuals and the 7% regime for foreign pensioners, you are exempt from RW reporting and from IVIE and IVAFE on the foreign assets the regime covers. For many clients this is worth as much as the income tax saving.
This is the point we most often make to clients who arrive with a plan already in place. A special regime is not granted by a letter, a ruling or a meeting. With limited exceptions, it is elected in the tax return, and if the election is not made correctly, in the right return, the regime does not apply.
That covers the 7% regime, the lump sum tax and the inbound workers regime, each with its own conditions and boxes. Where a payment must accompany the election, the payment deadline is part of the regime: miss it and the regime can be lost outright. Where the conditions were met and the tax paid on time but the formal election was omitted, the remissione in bonis procedure allows a cure in the first available return, with a fixed €250 penalty. A good thing to know about and a bad thing to rely on.
An Italian resident declares foreign income in Italy and then relieves double taxation, usually through the foreign tax credit under Article 165 TUIR. The credit is limited to the Italian tax attributable to that income, and requires the foreign tax to be final, which is why the timing of a foreign assessment can decide which Italian return the credit lands in.
Where a treaty gives the taxing right exclusively to the other State, the income may be excluded from the Italian base altogether rather than credited. The two routes produce very different numbers, and the choice depends on the applicable treaty article.
Americans keep filing in the United States wherever they live. The Italian and US returns have to be prepared as one exercise: which country taxes first, how the credit is claimed on each side, how FBAR and FATCA sit alongside the RW section, and how the two tax years are aligned. We work alongside your US advisors, not around them.
Unfiled returns, an omitted RW section, an account nobody mentioned, a regime elected in the wrong year: these are common, and almost always fixable on better terms if you move first. Voluntary correction (ravvedimento operoso) allows penalties reduced according to how quickly you act; the reductions shrink over time and disappear once an audit begins. We assess the exposure, quantify it before you commit to anything, and regularise it.
Our service covers the whole annual cycle, so nothing is missed between one return and the next.
Avv. Marco Mesina, a member of the Milan Bar (Ordine degli Avvocati di Milano) and formerly of Deloitte and Withers, leads a practice built around internationally mobile clients, so your return is prepared by people who understand the foreign side as well as the Italian one. A regime that was correctly planned and incorrectly filed is worth nothing, and that is precisely where we make the difference.
Yes. Italian residents are taxed on worldwide income and must file, then relieve double taxation through the foreign tax credit or the applicable treaty. Foreign tax paid does not remove the obligation.
It can usually be corrected through voluntary correction, with penalties reduced the sooner you act. Penalties run from 3% to 15% of the undeclared amount before reduction.
Sometimes, but it cannot handle many international situations, such as complex foreign income, full foreign-asset reporting or business income. Most of our clients file the Modello Redditi PF.
No. Both regimes exempt you from RW reporting and from IVIE and IVAFE on the foreign assets they cover. You still file a return each year.
Under ordinary rules, interest and penalties apply, reduced by prompt voluntary correction. Under some special regimes, late payment can cause the regime itself to be lost.
Avv. Marco Mesina
Founder, Move to Dolce Vita · Avvocato, Milan Bar (Ordine degli Avvocati di Milano)
Marco is an Italian tax lawyer who advises individuals and families relocating to Italy on tax regimes, residency, citizenship, real estate and succession planning. Before founding Move to Dolce Vita he worked at Watson Farley & Williams, Withers and Deloitte in Milan.