Since 1 January 2026, Italy will tax a new resident's entire foreign-source income at a flat €300,000 a year, whether that income is €1 million or €100 million. It's a genuinely simple deal, and it just got considerably more expensive to get into.

The Number, Correctly Stated

Italy's regime for new tax residents launched in the 2017 budget at €100,000 a year. It hasn't been €100,000 since August 2024, when the government raised it to €200,000 for new applicants. It changed again under the 2026 Budget Law, approved 30 December 2025: for anyone becoming an Italian tax resident from 1 January 2026 onward, the flat tax is now €300,000 a year, with an additional €50,000 per qualifying family member, up from €25,000. The €200,000 rate still applies, but only to people who were already resident under it before the increase took effect. It isn't available to a new applicant today. Anyone relying on an older source quoting €100,000, or even €200,000, is reading about a rate that no longer exists for anyone establishing new residency now.

The rest of the mechanism hasn't changed. It's available to individuals who become Italian tax resident and weren't Italian tax resident in at least nine of the previous ten years, runs for up to fifteen years, and applies only to foreign-source income. Italian-source income, from Italian employment, business, or rental property, is still taxed at ordinary Italian rates, which run progressive up to 43% before regional and municipal add-ons. In other words, the flat fee replaces tax on what you earn everywhere else in the world. It never touches what you earn inside Italy itself.

Who's Actually Used It

Public reporting on named users of the regime is thinner than the regime's reputation suggests, and it's worth being straightforward about what's actually confirmed rather than repeating a list that's become received wisdom. Nassef Sawiris, Egypt's richest person, is independently reported to have relocated to Italy in 2025 over UK tax changes, taking advantage of the flat-tax framework. Football figures and finance executives are frequently cited in press roundups as regime users, generally without individual sourcing solid enough to name confidently here.

The honest version is: the regime has drawn "hundreds" of relocations by most press accounts, concentrated in Milan and Rome, with Florence, Venice, and Portofino as secondary bases, and Sawiris is the clearest individually confirmed example currently available. That's a smaller, blurrier picture than the regime's reputation suggests, and it's the one worth working from rather than a longer list that can't actually be checked.

There's also a gap the flat tax doesn't cover. Italian inheritance and gift tax rules run entirely separately from the flat-tax regime and are not folded into the €300,000 fee. Anyone moving to Italy purely for the income-tax arithmetic should confirm the succession picture separately rather than assuming one number covers everything.

What Actually Makes the Math Work

For someone with, say, €10 million a year in foreign investment income, ordinary Italian tax could run into several million euros. Under the flat-tax regime, the bill is €300,000, full stop, regardless of how large the foreign income actually is. That gap is the entire point of the regime, and it only gets more dramatic the larger the foreign income is, which is exactly why it appeals to a narrow, wealthy slice of movers rather than to anyone weighing a general European relocation.

• Italy flat tax
  Structure: €300,000/year flat (new from 2026); €200,000 grandfathered
  Best fit: Very high foreign income, values Italian lifestyle specifically

• Greece non-dom
  Structure: €100,000/year flat
  Best fit: Similar profile, lower flat fee, Greek base instead

• UK FIG regime
  Structure: 4-year exemption, genuinely new residents only
  Best fit: Time-limited planning, not a long-term base

• Cyprus non-dom
  Structure: Up to 17 years' exemption on foreign dividends and interest
  Best fit: EU access with a longer runway, lower entry cost

• Malta Global Residence Programme
  Structure: €15,000 minimum annual tax
  Best fit: Lower income levels, smaller EU footprint

Who This Actually Suits

Run the arithmetic honestly and the regime only makes sense once foreign income is high enough that €300,000 is clearly less than what ordinary Italian tax would take. In practice, that tends to mean foreign income comfortably above €1–2 million a year. Below that, Italy's regular tax system, plus its famously slow bureaucracy, makes the country an expensive lifestyle choice rather than a tax-efficient one. Above it, the fifteen-year runway, EU access, and genuinely simple annual number are hard to beat for someone who actually wants to live in Italy rather than just bank there.

That's the whole decision, really: this regime is not for someone chasing the lowest possible number across every jurisdiction on earth. It's for someone who has already decided they want an Italian address, and would like the tax bill on their foreign income to stop being a moving target.

Where This Gets Practical

If your foreign income is in range and Italy is somewhere you'd actually choose to live rather than just structure through, bring us your income breakdown and we'll model the €300,000 fee against what you'd otherwise owe, including what changes if you'd have qualified for the grandfathered €200,000 rate.

General information, current as of the 2026 Budget Law. Tax rates and thresholds change; confirm current figures with an Italian-qualified adviser before relying on them.