Impatriate regime and “Employer of Record”: the Tax Authorities broaden the requirement of residence abroad

With ruling reply No. 54/2026, the Italian Revenue Agency addressed the new favourable regime for impatriate workers introduced by Article 5 of Legislative Decree No. 209/2023, dealing with the issue of continuity of the employer in cases involving the use of “Employer of Record” (EoR) structures.

The case concerned a worker who returned to Italy after a period of work carried out abroad through a Swiss EoR company belonging to an international group. Once the worker transferred his residence to Italy, the employment relationship continued through a different Italian EoR company belonging to the same group, but with the work being performed in favour of a different user company, not connected to the previous one.

According to the taxpayer, the absence of continuity between the “user” companies should have allowed the ordinary requirement of three tax periods of residence abroad to apply. The Italian Revenue Agency, however, adopted a formal interpretation of the provision, considering the continuity between the EoR companies belonging to the same group sufficient to extend the minimum requirement of residence abroad to six tax periods.

The ruling highlights a particularly relevant aspect of the new impatriate regime: for the purposes of applying the strengthened requirement of residence abroad, continuity of the employer or corporate group is relevant, even where the entity that substantially benefits from the work performed is different.

From a prudential perspective, the position of the Italian Revenue Agency therefore confirms a broad approach to the concept of employment continuity, capable of significantly affecting international employment structures and organisational models based on EoR arrangements.

From a more critical perspective, the interpretative solution appears to favour a formal criterion based on the structure of the corporate group, even where there are different user companies and no actual economic and functional continuity of the work performed. This aspect, in particular, may give rise to further interpretative issues in the practice of multinational groups.