A craftsman who sells flat-tax equipment at a €12,000 loss just after the regime ends pays €5,960 less than one who sells it just before

A joiner on Italy’s flat-tax regime, the forfettario, buys a €20,000 machine. A good year takes their revenue past €85,000, so the flat tax ends on 31 December and the ordinary rules apply from 1 January. They then sell the machine for €8,000. If the sale is dated 31 December, the €12,000 lost on it has no effect on any tax bill. Dated in January, the loss is deducted, and on €60,000 of business income their first ordinary year costs €5,960.35 less in income tax and pension contributions.123

Of that, €3,042.59 is IRPEF, the national income tax, and €2,917.76 is the contribution an artisan pays to INPS, which would also have counted towards a pension. Regional and municipal surcharges on income are left out, so the full difference is somewhat larger.453

What the law does with equipment bought on the flat tax

The flat tax is charged on revenue multiplied by a fixed profitability coefficient. Real costs are never deducted, and a machine is a real cost like any other.6

Comma 72 of the 2014 law that created the regime deals with what happens after it ends. Spending during the regime “non assume rilevanza” in the years that follow, so the machine is not written down under the ordinary rules either. Its cost returns in one place only: when a good bought during the regime is sold after the exit, the gain or loss is worked out against “costo non ammortizzabile il prezzo di acquisto”, the full price paid, as a cost that was never depreciable. A good bought before the regime began is measured against what was left of its cost at the end of the year before entry.1

A loss on the sale of business equipment is deductible under the income-tax code, and for a small firm keeping simplified accounts the code subtracts it directly from business income. The loss is the price received minus that cost.789

Comma 72 says nothing about a sale made while the regime still applies. The Agenzia delle Entrate reads that silence in its 2016 circular on the regime: gains and losses realised during it “non abbiano alcun rilievo fiscale”, they have no tax effect at all, even on goods bought before the regime began. The same machine, sold at the same price, is therefore a deduction or nothing depending on which side of 1 January the sale falls.2

When the flat tax ends

Under comma 71 the regime stops applying from the year after the one in which a condition of entry fails, the usual one being revenue above €85,000. Revenue above €100,000 ends it in the same year instead, and that case is outside these figures.1011

What the loss is worth

Across business incomes from €30,000 to €80,000 the same €12,000 loss saves between €5,214 and €6,870. At €20,000 it saves €3,008, because an artisan owes a fixed contribution on the first €18,808 of income however little is earned, and the loss pushes income below that floor.35

Roughly half of every euro lost comes back at most incomes, so the amount tracks the size of the loss. On €60,000 of income:

How the figures were worked

Each figure is the difference between two versions of the first ordinary year that differ only in the deducted loss. IRPEF uses the 2026 bands of 23%, 33% and 43%, applied after deducting the year’s compulsory contributions, less the credit for business income, which shrinks to nothing at €50,000.41213

Contributions follow the 2026 INPS circular for artisans at the ordinary rate, with no reductions. The circular charges them on “la totalità dei redditi d’impresa denunciati ai fini IRPEF”, all the business income declared for income tax, which is why the loss lowers them too.53

What this does not cover

The rule outlives the law it sits in. From 1 January 2027 the regime moves into the new consolidated income-tax code, whose article 238 repeats comma 72 sentence for sentence, so a sale in 2027 meets the same treatment. The 2027 rates are not yet verified and are not used here.14

Comma 72 measures the gain or loss under the articles for business income. Professionals, whose income sits elsewhere in the code, are not modelled, nor are cars, which carry their own deduction limits. Leaving the regime also brings a VAT correction in the seller’s favour on equipment still in use, covered in the piece on VAT and the switch; none of it is in these figures.115

Contributions are counted against the year they are owed for. In practice they are deducted when paid, so part of the saving can land a year later. The rule cuts both ways: a machine sold after the exit for more than it cost produces a taxable gain that a sale inside the regime would not. Beyond the 2016 circular, no Agency document read for this piece addresses a sale timed around the exit. These are the rules’ arithmetic, not a recommendation about when to sell.72