Voluntary disclosure and self-laundering, 2014–2017

Law No. 186 of 2014

The Italian voluntary disclosure (collaborazione volontaria) was enacted by Law No. 186 of 15 December 2014, which inserted Articles 5-quater to 5-septies into Decree-Law No. 167 of 1990 on fiscal monitoring.¹ The procedure differed from the shields in every essential respect. The taxpayer had to disclose to the Agenzia delle Entrate, in his own name, all assets held abroad in violation of the monitoring obligations, together with the documents necessary to reconstruct the income earned on them for all tax years still open to assessment. He then paid the full income tax due on that income, with interest. The incentive lay in the penalties. The administrative penalties for the monitoring violations and for the income tax were reduced. The taxpayer also obtained immunity from prosecution for the principal tax offences of omitted, inaccurate or fraudulent declaration and the failure to pay withholding taxes, as well as for money laundering and self-laundering in relation to the proceeds of those tax offences.²

The law contained a provision designed for Switzerland. Taxpayers with assets in a black-listed state could benefit from the same favourable treatment as those with assets in states that exchanged information. The condition was that the state concluded with Italy, by 2 March 2015, an agreement allowing an exchange of information in line with Article 26 of the OECD Model. In that case the assessment periods were not doubled and the minimum monitoring penalty was 3 per cent of the undeclared amounts.³ The taxpayer also had to sign a waiver authorizing the foreign financial intermediary to transmit all the data concerning his accounts to the Italian authorities on request. The deadline of 2 March 2015 explains the date of the Swiss-Italian Protocol, which was signed one week before it. Italy obtained the treaty clause it had sought since 2009, and Switzerland obtained for its banks' clients access to the voluntary disclosure on the same terms as clients of Luxembourg or Austrian banks.

Results and the Swiss share

The window of the first voluntary disclosure was due to close on 30 September 2015 and was extended to 30 November 2015. At that date the Agenzia delle Entrate had received 129,565 applications, of which 127,348 concerned assets abroad, 1,507 domestic violations only and 710 both. The assets declared amounted to EUR 59.6 billion, with expected revenue of about EUR 3.8 billion net of interest and about EUR 4 billion including it.⁴ More than half the applications, 66,315, were filed in the last two months, a pattern that reflects the pressure exerted by Swiss banks on clients who delayed. Lombardy, the region bordering Ticino, accounted for 63,580 applications, almost half the total.⁵

The geographical breakdown confirmed the place of Switzerland. Of the assets declared, 69.6 per cent had been held in Switzerland, against 7.7 per cent in Monaco, 3.7 per cent in the Bahamas, 2.3 per cent in Singapore, 2.2 per cent in Luxembourg and 1.9 per cent in San Marino.⁶ Swiss assets therefore amounted to roughly EUR 41.5 billion. Unlike the shields, the voluntary disclosure did not require repatriation. A client who had regularized could leave his assets in Lugano, provided that he declared them each year in the quadro RW and paid the Italian tax on their income. For the Lugano banks this was the decisive difference from 2009. The voluntary disclosure created a population of tax-compliant Italian clients who remained in Switzerland. It thereby confirmed that the Swiss banks' business with Italy would henceforth consist of declared assets.

Notes

1. Law No. 186 of 15 December 2014, "Disposizioni in materia di emersione e rientro di capitali detenuti all'estero nonché per il potenziamento della lotta all'evasione fiscale. Disposizioni in materia di autoriciclaggio", Gazzetta Ufficiale No. 292 of 17 December 2014, in force on 1 January 2015, Art. 1, https://www.gazzettaufficiale.it/gazzetta/serie_generale/caricaDettaglio? dataPubblicazioneGazzetta=2014-12-17&numeroGazzetta=292. ↩
2. Art. 5-quinquies DL 167/1990 as inserted by Law No. 186/2014: exclusion of punishability for the offences under Arts. 2, 3, 4, 5, 10-bis and 10-ter of Legislative Decree No. 74/2000 and of Arts. 648-bis, 648-ter and 648-ter.1 of the Criminal Code in relation to those offences. ↩
3. Stefano Massarotto, "Italia e Svizzera: firmato l'accordo, cade il segreto bancario. Voluntary disclosure più conveniente", dirittobancario.it, February 2015, https://www.dirittobancario.it/sites/default/files/allegati/massarotto_s._italia_e_svizzera_firmat o_laccordo_cade_il_segreto_bancario._voluntary_disclosure_piu_conveniente_2015.pdf, on the minimum penalty of 3 per cent, the non-doubling of the periods and the authorization of the foreign intermediary. ↩
4. Finanza e Fisco, 9 December 2015 (above); "La voluntary fa i conti", Euroconference News, December 2015, https://www.ecnews.it/fiscale/accertamento-e-contenzioso/istituti-deflattivi/la-voluntary-fa-i-conti/. ↩
5. Euroconference News (above): 63,251 applications by 30 September and 66,315 in the extended period; Lombardy 63,580. ↩
6. Finanza e Fisco (above); Euroconference News (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.