Italy: residency, citizenship, tax and living

You can get residency in Italy through one of the country’s pathways to temporary residency, which include pathways for investors, remote workers, holders of passive income, and self-employed professionals. After five years on a temporary residence permit in the country, you can be eligible to apply for permanent residency in Italy.

Italy has an Investor visa that allows individuals who have strategic investments in the country to obtain a two-year residence permit, renewable for three additional years. Eligible investments under the program include government bonds, company investments, investments into an innovative startup, and investments in a philanthropic initiative.

While it’s still possible to get Italian citizenship by descent, the 2025 reform of the rules has made it more difficult. For example, eligible ancestry is determined to the second degree, so only parents and grandparents count for determining Italian descent. Additionally, children born to Italian parents abroad don’t automatically become citizens if they have another citizenship.

Italy’s flat tax regimes allow new tax residents in Italy to pay a lump-sum tax of EUR 300,000 on their foreign income, or have their foreign income taxed at a 7% rate. The EUR 300,000 lump-sum tax regime is open to all individuals, while the 7% tax regime is open to holders of foreign pensions who settle in specific regions of Italy.