20% withholding: Italy announces capital controls on incoming foreign transfers
Italian business publication Il Sole reported last week on an automatic withholding measure on all transfers from abroad that the government says will be retroactive to February 1. Ostensibly, the measure is to prevent Italians from receiving unclaimed (and thus untaxed) income from abroad. It’s easier to illustrate this new law with an example: Let’s say I want to buy an apartment near Rome and transferred 20,000 EUR from my Swiss account to my own Italian bank account on February 4. The new law states that Italy will simply withhold 20%, or 4,000 EUR, from the transfer, pending proof....
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