The Roadmap and the Protocol of 23 February 2015

Two documents signed in Milan

On 23 February 2015 the head of the Federal Department of Finance, Eveline Widmer- Schlumpf, and the Italian Minister of Economy and Finance, Pier Carlo Padoan, signed two documents in Milan. The first was a Protocol amending the double taxation convention of 1976. The second was a "roadmap" for the continuation of the dialogue on financial and tax matters.¹ The Federal Council described the agreement as a step towards improving financial and fiscal relations after years of disputes, and as a means of allowing the regularization of undeclared assets before the introduction of the automatic exchange of information.² The Italian government presented it as the end of banking secrecy between the two countries. Both descriptions were accurate. The Protocol gave Italy the legal instrument to obtain information on identified taxpayers, while the Roadmap listed the counterparts that Switzerland expected.

The Federal Council's message to Parliament summarized the Roadmap's content.³ Switzerland was to be removed from the Italian black lists once the Protocol entered into force, since the criterion for its inclusion had been the absence of exchange of information on request. Italian clients of Swiss financial institutions were to be admitted to the voluntary disclosure on the same conditions, with the same criminal and administrative penalties, as clients with undeclared accounts in Italy or in states that applied the OECD standard. The parameters of a future solution for the taxation of frontier workers were set out, and discussions with the cantons of Ticino, Graubünden and Valais were to continue. The indirect tax aspects of the Italian enclave of Campione d'Italia were reserved for later discussion, as was the improvement of market access for financial service providers. The automatic exchange of information was expressly excluded from the Protocol and left to separate instruments.

Article 27 and the group request

The Protocol gave the convention a new Article 27 on the exchange of information, drafted on the OECD standard. It covers taxes of every kind and description and allows the requested state to provide information in response to requests concerning a group of precisely identified taxpayers.⁴ The new clause applies to information concerning facts or circumstances existing or realized on or after the date of signature of the Protocol, 23 February 2015.⁵ This temporal limit was significant for the Lugano banks. Italy could not request information on the period before 23 February 2015, so that a client who had closed his account before that date could not be identified through a request. For accounts open on that date, the bank's records from that date onwards could be requested.

The Protocol entered into force on 13 July 2016 after ratification by both parliaments.⁶ On 2 March 2017 the Swiss Federal Tax Administration and the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance concluded a mutual agreement on the modalities of group requests.⁷ Swiss domestic law permitted such requests under the Federal Act on International Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters, provided that the requesting state described the group precisely, explained the pattern of conduct suggesting noncompliance and showed that the information was foreseeably relevant.⁸ The standard pattern was the one that the Swiss banks had themselves created: the exit letter. A client who had received a letter asking for evidence of tax compliance, had not provided it and had closed or emptied his account fitted a description that Italy could use without knowing his name.

Notes

1. Swiss Federal Council, press release of 23 February 2015, https://www.admin.ch/gov/it/start/dokumentation/medienmitteilungen.msg-id-56318.html. ↩
2. Press release of 23 February 2015 (above). ↩
3. Federal Council, Messaggio on the Protocol (above). ↩
4. Messaggio (above): "domande concernenti un gruppo di contribuenti identificati in modo preciso". ↩
5. Messaggio (above): applicable "a fatti e, o, circostanze esistenti o realizzate il giorno della firma del Protocollo di modifica o dopo tale data". ↩
6. Diritto.it, 16 March 2017 (above). ↩
7. Vorpe, "Roma chiede i dati" (above). ↩
8. Federal Act on International Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters of 28 September 2012 (Tax Administrative Assistance Act, TAAA), SR 651.1, Art. 3 lit. c, which defines group requests as requests for information on several persons "die nach einem identischen Verhaltensmuster vorgegangen sind und anhand präziser Angaben identifizierbar sind", and Art. 6 para. 2bis, under which the Federal Council determines the required content of a group request; both were inserted by the Federal Act of 21 March 2014, in force since 1 August 2014 (AS 2014 2309), droit-bilingue.ch, https://www.droit-bilingue.ch/de-fr/6/65/651.1-3-6.html and https://www.droit-bilingue.ch/de-fr/6/65/651.1-6-11.html. ↩

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.