ROME - - The figure of the super-rich who have moved to Italy to benefit from a lower, flat-rate tax is now 2,142, according to a recent report by the Italian Court of Auditors. 

 The flat-rate tax charged is 100,000 euros regardless of income produced abroad and was launched in 2016 by the Renzi government. However, there are also now 11,000 Italians who have moved abroad to tax havens while maintaining sources of income in Italy and who are very rarely regulated, according to Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano. This is despite almost 80 percent of these expats not being in regulation with the exchequer. These are two niche phenomena to which the Court of Auditors devotes brief insights in its report on the general account of the state.

 The “flat tax”, which Cristiano Ronaldo embraced when playing for football club Juventus between 2017 and 2021, has been chosen by more and more taxpayers. In the year the scheme launched, there were 98 of these super-rich and the figure has risen constantly, reaching over 800 in 2021 and over 2000 this year. 

 But “the information provided does not allow us to know either the amount of foreign income on which the substitute tax acts, or the ordinary taxes that would have actually been levied on such income in the absence of the replacement system," according to the court's report.

 The total lack of transparency, Fatto adds, also concerns the possible impact on investments made in Italy, the increase of which was the aim declared in the explanatory report to the Budget law in 2017 which introduced the measure: “It is not possible, in the absence of of specific surveys, to evaluate the real correspondence of the measurement” to that purpose.

 What is left, then, questions Fatto. A favour to millionaires and billionaires “mainly aimed at favouring individuals who can derive sources of income from multiple countries and who transfer their residence to Italy for residential or work purposes (as in the frequent case of professional sportsmen) or other reasons.”

 The other court finding concerns the checks on residents of countries with preferential taxation. In 2020, which saw the last recorded data, there were over 3 million Italian citizens residing abroad, of which over half a million were living in a low-tax country. Switzerland was in the lead, followed by Uruguay and the UAE. 

 This data, according to the accounting magistrates, shows “the need for specific attention, in the context of control measures, towards the numerous Italian who have moved to countries with reduced taxation” or to countries which still grant favourable tax incentives, such as Cyprus. 

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