Italy — Taxes
- Tax-residents are taxed on worldwide income, up to 43% plus local surcharges
- New residents can opt into a flat tax of 231,000 USD per year on all foreign income
- VAT (IVA) standard rate is 22%
- The Investor Visa gives residence, not citizenship — naturalisation takes ten years
- Holding the permit does not by itself make you tax-resident
Worldwide taxation, softened by an optional flat tax
Italy taxes its tax-residents on worldwide income, at progressive national rates up to 43%, plus regional and municipal surcharges; VAT is 22%. The headline attraction for the wealthy is a flat-tax regime: new residents can elect to pay a fixed 231,000 USD per year on all foreign-source income (raised from 115,000 USD in 2024), for up to fifteen years. It is powerful for very large foreign incomes, and a poor deal for modest ones.
The Investor Visa is residence, not a passport
The Investor Visa grants EU residence for an investment of 289,000 USD in an innovative startup, 577,000 USD in a company, 2,310,000 USD in government bonds, or a 1,155,000 USD donation. There is no minimum-stay rule to hold it — but that same absence of presence works against you for citizenship.
The ten-year road to a passport
Naturalisation requires ten years of genuine legal residence, one of the longest waits in the EU, and real presence, not just a permit on paper. Judge Italy as a first-rate European residence and lifestyle base, with citizenship a distant, separate horizon.
Residency, tax residence and duties elsewhere
Becoming Italian tax-resident turns on presence and your centre of interests, not on merely holding the visa, and the visa does not remove obligations to a country that taxes on citizenship, such as the United States. Compare Italy with the golden visas of Portugal and Greece, read our residency hub and tax hub, and see how each figure is checked in our methodology.
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What we do for you
Citizenship or residence, the honest answer often is not the one you arrived with. We take the whole procedure with you — eligibility, the route that fits your situation, the file, the follow-up — with one person on your side throughout.
For Italy specifically, you are talking to someone who already knows the file: who to speak to on the ground, what the unit actually asks for, and the points where applications stall.
- One point of contact, from the first call to the certificate
- Vetted partners on the ground — law firms, licensed agents, banks — introduced, not listed
- It starts with a short qualifying call, and no, it is not a sales call
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