Bookkeeping and its review, financial statements, the Italian personal and corporate returns, property taxes and the filings that follow an inheritance. The work is carried out here, by the person who then explains it to you, and the Italian terms on your documents are translated once so that you recognise them next time.
Keeping the books means the ordinary month: invoices in and out recorded and filed, bank movements matched, payroll entries posted, VAT registers kept current and the periodic settlement calculated and paid on time. None of it is difficult. All of it is unforgiving, because an error made in March surfaces in the annual accounts nine months later, by which time it has been repeated nine times.
Reviewing runs in the opposite direction. A set of accounts already exists, kept by a previous advisor or by the client's own staff, and the question is whether it can be relied on before anything is built on top of it. We reconcile the ledger against the bank, the VAT registers against the returns actually filed, the depreciation register against the assets that exist, and report what holds and what does not. It is an accounting review, not an audit in the legal sense, and the firm does not hold itself out as performing one.
Foreign owners of Italian companies usually need the second before the first. The accounts arrive with the company, written by someone who is no longer answering, and the honest starting point is to check them rather than inherit them.
Invoices, bank reconciliation, VAT registers and the periodic settlement. Electronic invoicing made the flow automatic and the errors quieter, which is why the reconciliation still has to be done by a person.
Closing entries, depreciation, accruals and the tax reconciliation that turns a civil law profit into a taxable one. The two figures are rarely the same and the difference has to be documented.
A second reading of accounts kept elsewhere, with a written note of what reconciles and what would have to be corrected before the next return is filed on top of it.
Books do not travel by themselves. We list what to ask the previous advisor for, check what arrives against that list, and rebuild the opening balances instead of copying them.
The Italian personal return is the Modello Redditi PF. An individual files it when the simplified 730 is not available, and it is not available to non residents, which is why almost every foreign client with an Italian interest ends up on this form. It carries Italian source income of every kind: rent from an Italian property, self employment carried on here, capital gains on Italian assets, and the property itself even when it produces nothing.
Two dates get confused. The balance for the previous year and the first payment on account fall due on 30 June, with a deferral into July against a small surcharge. The filing itself is electronic and its deadline falls at the end of September. Paying on time and filing late is a different and much cheaper problem than filing on time and paying late.
Companies work to a different rhythm. The financial statements are approved within four months of the year end, or six where the law and the articles allow it, then filed with the Registro delle Imprese at the Chamber of Commerce within thirty days of approval. The corporate return, Modello Redditi SC, follows within nine months of the year end, with IRES and the regional IRAP settled on the same calendar as personal payments.
The personal return. Residents declare worldwide income, non residents only Italian source income, and the treaty with your country of residence decides what happens to the same income there.
Balance sheet, profit and loss account and notes, approved, filed at the Chamber of Commerce and reconciled into the corporate return. The annual Chamber of Commerce fee and the REA updates run alongside.
IMU is paid to the municipality where the property stands, in two instalments falling on 16 June and 16 December. TARI, the waste charge, is billed by the same municipality on its own calendar.
Residential rent can be taxed at a flat rate that also absorbs the registration tax and stamp duty on the lease. The trade is that the rent cannot be indexed while the option lasts.
When somebody dies holding Italian assets, the Italian side of the estate has its own procedure regardless of where the deceased lived or where the will was drawn. The dichiarazione di successione is presented electronically to the Agenzia delle Entrate, and from it follow the cadastral transfer of the properties into the names of the heirs and the taxes attached to that transfer.
The part that catches people is the year of the death. IMU is counted in whole months and a month belongs to whoever held the property for at least fifteen days of it. So the year splits: the months up to the death are the deceased's and are settled by an heir filing on their behalf, signing as heir with codice carica 07, while the months from the death onwards belong to the heirs in proportion to their shares. Two payments, two positions, one year. Get it right and a property later sold does not carry an unresolved tax history into the deed.
Cadastral searches on the properties, the bank and investment positions, any Italian shareholding. An estate is filed from records, not from a description.
The dichiarazione di successione with the values, the shares and the reliefs that apply, filed electronically within the term running from the opening of the estate.
The voltura catastale puts the properties into the heirs' names. Until it is done the municipality is still billing someone who has died.
The deceased's months of IMU settled by the heir, the heirs' months settled by each of them, and the position carried forward correctly into the following year.
Moving an accounting file is a moment of real risk, because the incoming advisor normally accepts the closing balances of the outgoing one and any error inside them becomes permanent. We do not do that. The opening balances are reconciled before the first entry of the new year is posted, and if they do not reconcile you are told so in writing.
The list below is what makes that possible. Every item on it is something your previous advisor is obliged to hand over, and if one of them does not arrive the absence is itself a finding, better reported in the first week than discovered the following June.
The last approved financial statements for a company, or the last return filed for an individual or a sole trader. Everything else is checked against this figure.
VAT registers for sales and purchases, the general ledger and the depreciation register. Together they say whether the closing figure was built or simply written.
The periodic VAT settlements already calculated and paid, so the year in progress is picked up mid stride rather than restarted.
Bank against ledger, VAT registers against the returns actually filed, depreciation register against the assets that exist, and a short written note of what matches and what does not.
The next twelve months of Italian deadlines that apply to you specifically, from IMU in June to the Chamber of Commerce filing after the accounts are approved.
Two things, usually. IMU, the local property tax, is paid to the municipality in two instalments, on 16 June and on 16 December, and it is owed whether the flat is rented, lived in or empty. Then there is the Italian personal return, the Modello Redditi PF, because a non resident who owns property here has Italian source income and cannot use the simplified 730 form.
It is a flat rate tax on residential rent that replaces ordinary income tax on that rent, the regional and municipal surcharges, the registration tax on the lease and the stamp duty. The price is that the rent cannot be indexed while the option lasts. Whether it pays depends on your other Italian income and on what your country of residence does with the same rent under the treaty, so we run both calculations before electing anything.
It is split. IMU is counted in whole months and a month belongs to whoever held the property for at least fifteen days of it. The months up to the death are the deceased's and are settled by an heir filing on their behalf, which in the electronic forms means signing as heir with codice carica 07. The months from the death onwards belong to the heirs, each for their own share. This split is the single most common error we find in inherited Italian files.
The last approved financial statements or, for an individual or a sole trader, the last return filed, plus the VAT registers, the general ledger, the depreciation register and the periodic VAT settlements for the current year. With those the opening balances can be reconciled rather than trusted. If something is missing we tell you which document and why it matters, instead of starting the year on figures nobody has checked.
One filed return, or one set of approved financial statements, is enough to say what your Italian position looks like and what falls due in the next six months. The first reading carries no obligation and no fee.