Legacy Italian assets and inherited accounts: a practitioner's checklist

Where legacy cases still arise

Nine years after the start of the automatic exchange, legacy Italian assets still reach the desks of Lugano bankers, lawyers and fiduciaries. They arise in four typical situations. The first is the inherited account: an Italian resident dies leaving a Swiss account that he never declared. His heirs, often resident in Italy, learn of it from the bank or from the papers of the deceased. The second is the account regularized under a shield with anonymity, which remains held through an Italian fiduciary company and whose history the present holder may not fully know. The third is the structure: a Liechtenstein foundation, a Panamanian company or a discretionary trust set up decades ago, whose Italian beneficiaries have never declared their interest. The fourth is the account of an Italian citizen who moved to Ticino, sometimes long ago, and whose Italian residence for past years the Agenzia delle Entrate may contest. Chapter E.V treats the succession and residence aspects of these cases. The following paragraphs address the tax and criminal law exposure that must be analysed before any decision is taken.

Limitation periods and the open tax years

The first question is which years remain open. Under Article 43 of Presidential Decree No. 600 of 29 September 1973, as amended by Law No. 208 of 28 December 2015, notices of assessment for income tax must be served by 31 December of the fifth year following that in which the return was filed. If no return was filed, or the return was null, the period runs until 31 December of the seventh year following that in which the return should have been filed. These periods apply from the tax year 2016. For earlier years the periods were four and five years respectively, with a doubling in cases of criminal tax offences that was abolished for the years from 2016.¹ For undeclared income from assets in black-listed states, Article 12 paragraphs 2-bis and 2-ter of Decree-Law No. 78 of 2009 doubled the periods. For an Italian resident with an undeclared Swiss account, both the tax on the income and the monitoring penalties for a year such as 2019 could therefore be assessed until the end of 2030 under the doubled regime, and until the end of 2025 without it.²

The removal of Switzerland from the list of 1999 from the tax year 2024 ends the doubling for future years. Whether it also benefits violations committed before 2024 is disputed and awaits the Corte di Cassazione.³ A cautious practitioner will assume the longer periods for years up to 2023 until that question is settled. He will in any case treat the presumption of Article 12 paragraph 2 as applicable to the years from 2009 to 2023, subject to the case law excluding its application to earlier years.

Notes

1. "Termini di decadenza per l'accertamento delle imposte", FiscoeTasse, 29 March 2023, https://www.fiscoetasse.com/approfondimenti/15332-termini-di-decadenza-per-laccertamento-delle-imposte.html. Law No. 208 of 28 December 2015, "Disposizioni per la formazione del bilancio annuale e pluriennale dello Stato (legge di stabilità 2016)", Gazzetta Ufficiale No. 302 of 30 December 2015, https://www.gazzettaufficiale.it/gazzetta/serie_generale/caricaDettaglio? dataPubblicazioneGazzetta=2015-12-30&numeroGazzetta=302. FiscoeTasse also states that the law "ha altresì abrogato il raddoppio" of the periods in cases of criminal tax offences. ↩
2. Federico Migliorini, "Quadro RW: sanzioni e scadenze per i paradisi fiscali", Fiscomania, 30 December 2025, https://fiscomania.com/quadro-rw-sanzioni-scadenza-paradisi-fiscali/, giving 31 December 2025 and 31 December 2030 for the tax year 2019. ↩
3. Migliorini, "Svizzera esce dalla black list" (above). ↩

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.