Italy’s Supreme Court’s decision n. 6501 of March 31, 2015, dealing with the case of an Italian citizen  who had most of his personal and family connections in Italy but moved to work in another country (Switzerland), where he had most of his economic and financial interests, ruled that the taxpayer’s economic and financial connections should prevail over the taxpayer’s personal and family connections under the center of vital interests test of the Italy-Switzerland treaty, and concluded that the taxpayer’s tax residency had to be allocated to Switzerland under that treaty.

The above decision is the last of a series of recent Italian tax courts’ rulings supporting the conclusion that economic ties to a country are more important than personal or family ties to another country in determining an individual’s tax residency.

The Supreme Court’s holding goes against older case law and has very important ramifications.

We refer, in particular, to the frequent cases of American citizens who transfer money from the United States from Italy, purchase and own valuable homes in Italy, and spend significant time there, together with their family. Those people usually pass the test for establishing tax residency in Italy under Italian domestic tax law.

In many cases, the Italian tax administration, who can rely on extensive data base detecting U.S. transfers of money to Italy and purchase and ownership of Italian homes, sends audit letters to inquire about the tax status of those foreign citizens in Italy, considering that they usually are not aware of the problem and have never filed any Italian income tax returns.

The recent case law offers a valuable opportunity to avoid unintended tax consequences arising from inadvertent Italian tax residency, in a sense that taxpayers in those cases can still argue that their tax residency remained in the United States whenever sufficient economic and financial interests are still located there, while physical presence and personal and family connections have shifted to Italy.