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7% flat tax for foreign pensioners moving to southern Italy

Individuals holding foreign-source pension income who move their tax residence to a qualifying southern comune can elect a 7% flat substitute tax on their foreign-source income, in place of ordinary IRPEF, for the year of transfer plus the following nine tax periods — ten in total, non-renewable.

This list is not the whole rule
  • This list covers only the southern-regions route. Art. 24-ter admits a SECOND route that is not encoded here: comuni listed in Allegati 1, 2 and 2-bis to D.L. 189/2016 (the 2016-17 Central Italy earthquakes — areas of Abruzzo, Lazio, Marche and Umbria), and comuni affected by the 6 April 2009 L'Aquila earthquake. Those comuni also qualify and are NOT shown below. Adding them needs the annex lists, which are their own sourcing job.
  • Whether the 30,000 threshold also applies to the seismic-zone route is not settled here — the statute's “avente comunque una popolazione non superiore a 30.000 abitanti” sits between the two routes and could attach to either. It does not affect the comuni listed below, all of which qualify via the southern-regions route.
2,424
qualifying comuni
8
regions
≤ 30,000
residents per comune
10,623,863
people living in them

How this list is built: the rule is stored as data, not prose, and the towns are derived by applying it to this site’s comune population — never hand-listed. A comune that crosses 30,000 residents in a future update drops off this page on its own. The threshold binds to ISTAT's annual municipal demographic survey (“Rilevazione comunale annuale del movimento e calcolo della popolazione”) as of 1 January of the year PRECEDING the first tax period of the option, and that figure stays binding for the whole run unless the taxpayer moves to a different qualifying comune. This site applies the threshold to ISTAT resident population at 1 January 2025 — which is exactly the binding figure for someone whose first tax period is 2026. Someone starting in 2027 binds to 1 January 2026 instead, so a comune close to the line should be checked against its own year.

A qualifying town is not a qualifying person. Where you move is only one of the conditions. The rest are about you, and no map can check them: Holds pension income paid by a foreign source. Was not tax-resident in Italy in the five tax periods preceding the one in which the option takes effect (art. 24-ter comma 2). Transfers residence from a country with an administrative-cooperation agreement in force with Italy (art. 24-ter comma 3).

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The rule, and what still needs checking

Criteria checked against the statute and the Agenzia delle Entrate guidance above on 2026-08-23. Still not tax advice — the personal criteria in particular are worth a commercialista’s eye.

Sources · data as of 2026-08-09
  • Qualifying comuniExpat Living Italy — rule applied to ISTAT population — Comuni that meet the comune-level criteria of the 7% pensioner regime: population at or below 30,000 in 8 regions. Derived by applying the rule to the resident population in this site's comune spine — not a hand-maintained list — so a comune crossing the threshold leaves on the next run. Shaded by population. Personal eligibility depends on criteria no map can check.