A developer who moves to Italy can bill their old employer abroad on the flat tax, but a job that ends in January instead of December costs the first year: €13,263

A software developer paid more than €35,000 by a company in Berlin moves to Milan and keeps working for the same company, now as a freelancer on Italy’s flat-tax regime. If the job ended on 31 December, the old employer can be the main client from the first invoice. If it ended in January instead, the regime is closed for that whole first year. On €60,000 of billing that year costs €13,263.123

Both answers come from the Agenzia delle Entrate’s own replies to people who asked before they moved. Of the 105 replies on the flat tax it has published since 2018, 5 deal with this exact plan. They agree on the rule, and the rule is about dates and residence rather than about who the client is.4

The old employer is not the obstacle

Italian law bars the flat tax to anyone whose work goes mainly to an employer they have, or had in the two preceding tax years. Inside Italy that rule is expensive, and an earlier piece priced it at three years outside the regime.53

For a job held abroad, the Agenzia reads it differently. In 2019 a developer living abroad asked whether he could come back and bill his last foreign employer. The answer was that a freelance relationship with a foreign party, after employment that also took place abroad, rules out the abuse the provision targets, because the pay earned abroad had “alcun criterio di collegamento con il territorio dello Stato” — no connection with Italy at all. The 2024 reply applied the same reasoning to an EU citizen employed in another EU country, who had agreed with her employer to end the job on 31 December, open a partita IVA in January and invoice the same company.61

The date the job ends is

A second rule shuts the regime to anyone who earned more than a set amount from employment in the previous year. The threshold is irrelevant if the employment has ended, but only if it ended in that previous year. Quoting its own 2016 guidance, the Agenzia says that “rilevano solo le cessazioni del rapporto di lavoro intervenute nell’anno precedente”: a job that ends in the year you want the regime does not count as ended.78

Foreign pay counts towards it. In 2021 the Agenzia told a person employed abroad on more than the threshold, who planned to move in the autumn and end the job that year, that the rule “si applica anche nel caso di rapporti di lavoro all’estero”. The regime was closed for that year, which he would also have spent mostly abroad, and open from the next. In 2023 the Agenzia added that the pay counts whether or not Italy taxes it.28

For 2025 and 2026 the threshold is €35,000. The consolidated code that takes over the regime’s rules on 1 January 2027 restates both exclusions and writes the threshold as €30,000. The provision that raised it, read on 27 October 2026, covers 2025 and 2026 only. The developer here earned more than either figure.910

What the first year costs

Someone shut out of the flat tax files under the ordinary rules, with progressive income tax and its surcharges in place of the 15% substitute tax. For software work the regime presumes 67% of billing is profit, and pension contributions go to the INPS Gestione separata either way. On €60,000 of billing with no deductible costs, a year under the ordinary rules leaves €13,263 less in hand. The comparison holds the billing and the year’s rules fixed and leaves the January pay out of both sides.311

The 15% rate is the conservative assumption. The 5% start-up rate requires that the new activity is not a continuation of work previously done as an employee, and freelancing for the same company on the same work is hard to describe any other way. The Agenzia refused the 5% to someone who moved a foreign practice to Italy with the same clients, a case covered separately. If the 5% did apply, the lost year would be worth €16,235.12133

Real business costs shrink the gap, because the ordinary rules deduct them and the flat rate does not. At costs of 10% of billing the year costs €10,024; at 30%, €3,547. A developer whose costs are a laptop and a subscription stays close to the no-cost figure.3

The register that undid one move

The 2019 reasoning has a condition built in: the work abroad must have had no connection with Italy. In 2020 a man who had been working in another country since January 2019 asked the same question and was refused. His registration with AIRE, the register of Italians living abroad, was still pending, so the Agenzia’s records showed him “ancora residente in Italia”. Italy therefore taxed his foreign pay, the connection existed, and the ex-employer rule applied.14

He asked again in 2021 with the registration confirmed, and this time the ex-employer rule did not apply. For the year before the registration took effect he had to rely on the tie-breaker in the tax treaty, the clause that decides which country a person is resident in when both claim them. The same reply repeated that the pay threshold still applied, and that it is measured over the calendar year rather than the foreign country’s tax year.1514

This trap belongs mostly to Italians coming home. A foreigner who never registered as resident in an Italian comune was never on that register. For them the question is the ordinary one of where they lived while employed.

The five replies

The Agenzia lists 4,104 replies to rulings requests on its month-by-month pages for 2018 to October 2026. 105 name the flat-tax regime or its exclusion list in their subject. Each was read as text and screened for a foreign element. 12 passed the screen, and 5 of those rule on someone billing an employer they had abroad. The other seven concern a practice run abroad, a non-resident, the start-up rate, the regime for returning workers, a consultancy contract and a move out of Italy.4

What this does not settle

A reply to a rulings request answers the person who asked, on the facts they gave, and every one of these says it did not check where the person lived. Where someone actually lived is a question of fact the Agenzia will not decide in this procedure.61

None of the five covers a job that carries on after the move. Someone who starts living in Italy and keeps the job for a few weeks is paid, for those weeks, as an Italian resident. On the logic of the 2020 refusal that pay has a connection with Italy, which would bring the ex-employer rule back for the following two years as well. That is a reading of the replies; the Agenzia has not published one on it.145

None involves an employer of record, the agencies that employ someone on a foreign company’s behalf. Whether the agency or the company counts as the old employer is not addressed. The rulings census covers replies whose subject names the regime; a reply filed under another heading would not be in it. The costs use 2026 rates and the Gestione separata, and nothing here is advice on a particular move.4