A comparative balance sheet and the case for partnerships
Tax, regulation, talent and cost
The preceding sections can be summarized in a comparative balance sheet. It must be read with the caveat that each centre offers several regimes and that the right choice for a family depends on its income, assets, heirs and way of life. Table 2 shows the main features of each centre from the perspective of a wealthy Italian family or of a Swiss institution that serves such families.
Centre Tax for wealthy Access to Italian Talent and costs residents clients Lugano Lump sum, min. base Passive only; Italian-speaking staff; CHF 429,100; direct branch needed lower Swiss wages heirs exempt Milan Flat EUR 300,000 on Full (Italian firms) Deep labour market; foreign income Italian costs Monaco No income tax (except Passive; French Small pool; very high French) supervision costs Zurich, Geneva lump sum; Passive only; Largest Swiss pools; Geneva Zurich ordinary tax branch needed highest wages Dubai No income tax; Passive; Italian International pool; residence visas residence rising costs presumption Singapore Low tax; family office Passive; distant Deep Asian pool; high incentives costs Luxembou Ordinary tax Full under EU/EEA Small markets; high rg, passport costs Liechtenst ein
Table 2: Comparative position of selected centres from the perspective of Italian private clients (2026). Sources: as in the preceding sections.1
Three observations follow from the table. The first is that Lugano's tax offer is competitive for wealthy residents, although several centres offer lower taxes. The Ticino lump-sum regime, the exemption of spouses and descendants from inheritance tax and the reduction of the maximum income tax rate to 12 per cent by 2030 place the canton in the upper middle of the Swiss range and ahead of Italy for families with substantial assets and heirs. Monaco and Dubai offer the absence of income tax altogether, and Milan offers a fixed price for foreign income. The second observation is that only the centres inside the single market, Milan, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein, can serve Italian private clients fully from their own territory. Switzerland, Monaco, Dubai and Singapore are all third countries for this purpose. The third is that Lugano's cost and talent position is favourable within Switzerland, thanks to the cross-border labour market and lower wages, while it cannot match the depth of Milan's or Zurich's professional pools.
What the balance sheet means for strategy
The balance sheet suggests that Lugano should compete where its advantages are structural and cooperate where its disadvantages cannot be removed by its own efforts. Lugano's structural advantages are Swiss institutions, the Swiss franc, legal certainty for Italian residents since Switzerland's removal from the Italian blacklist, an Italianspeaking professional community and a moderate tax burden for families who move. Its structural disadvantages are its size, its distance from the decision centres of the national banking groups and, above all, the absence of active access to Italian clients. None of these disadvantages can be removed by Ticino alone. The first two can be mitigated by partnerships with Zurich, the third by partnerships with Milan and with EU or EEA platforms.
This reading is consistent with the history told in this book. Lugano grew as a centre in the space between two legal orders. During the decades of the lira economy, described in Chapter D.II, the border separated the Italian client from the Swiss bank in a way that benefited Lugano, because the client wanted his assets outside Italy. Since the end of banking secrecy, the same border separates the Swiss bank from the Italian client in a way that harms Lugano, because the client is allowed to keep his assets in Switzerland but the bank is not allowed to approach him. Partnerships are the means by which a centre that lives on a border can turn the separation into a link.
Notes
- Compiled from the sources cited in this chapter and in Chapters E.IV and E.V. "Passive" means service only at the client's own exclusive initiative. ↩
For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of August 2025.