The Federal Office for the Environment, acting as publication platform for federal press releases, announced on 13 February 2026 that the amending protocol to the Italy–Switzerland double-tax agreement (DTA) has officially entered into force. Effective retroactively from 1 January 2024, the protocol enshrines a permanent solution for frontier workers who split their time between a Swiss workplace and an Italian home office.
Under the new rules, cross-border employees may work up to 25 percent of their annual working time from home in Italy without altering their frontier-worker tax status. Income earned during those home-office days will continue to be taxed in Switzerland and subject to the withholding regime already familiar to HR departments—a relief for multinationals with shared-service or finance teams living in Lombardy and Piedmont.
The agreement replaces the temporary COVID-era mutual understanding that expired at the end of 2023 and provides long-term planning certainty for roughly 75,000 Italian residents who commute to cantons Ticino, Valais and Grisons. Payroll providers must, however, retain evidence of working-time splits, and employers will need internal systems that flag the 25 percent threshold so as not to inadvertently trigger Italian taxation and social-security consequences.
![Switzerland and Italy Finalise Long-Term Home-Office Tax Deal for Frontier Workers]()
Organizations grappling with these cross-border arrangements may also need to manage visas, work permits, and travel documents for employees and their families. VisaHQ’s Switzerland portal (https://www.visahq.com/switzerland/) simplifies that administrative load by letting HR teams and travellers check requirements instantly, submit applications online, and track approvals—an efficient complement to the new tax-compliance obligations outlined in the protocol.
For mobility managers the headline is clarity: assignments can be designed with one or two remote days per week without fear of double taxation, provided the 25 percent ceiling is respected over a 12-month period. Companies with larger remote-working populations should update their intercompany cost-allocation and business-traveller tracking tools. The protocol also harmonises dispute-resolution mechanisms and mutual-assistance clauses, making it easier for payroll teams to resolve audits on either side of the border.
Italy is the third of Switzerland’s neighbours (after France and Germany) to cement post-pandemic home-office thresholds. Observers expect Bern and Rome to revisit the limit in 2028, when EU social-security coordination rules may permit a higher 49.9 percent telework threshold already adopted by several EFTA states.
Under the new rules, cross-border employees may work up to 25 percent of their annual working time from home in Italy without altering their frontier-worker tax status. Income earned during those home-office days will continue to be taxed in Switzerland and subject to the withholding regime already familiar to HR departments—a relief for multinationals with shared-service or finance teams living in Lombardy and Piedmont.
The agreement replaces the temporary COVID-era mutual understanding that expired at the end of 2023 and provides long-term planning certainty for roughly 75,000 Italian residents who commute to cantons Ticino, Valais and Grisons. Payroll providers must, however, retain evidence of working-time splits, and employers will need internal systems that flag the 25 percent threshold so as not to inadvertently trigger Italian taxation and social-security consequences.
Organizations grappling with these cross-border arrangements may also need to manage visas, work permits, and travel documents for employees and their families. VisaHQ’s Switzerland portal (https://www.visahq.com/switzerland/) simplifies that administrative load by letting HR teams and travellers check requirements instantly, submit applications online, and track approvals—an efficient complement to the new tax-compliance obligations outlined in the protocol.
For mobility managers the headline is clarity: assignments can be designed with one or two remote days per week without fear of double taxation, provided the 25 percent ceiling is respected over a 12-month period. Companies with larger remote-working populations should update their intercompany cost-allocation and business-traveller tracking tools. The protocol also harmonises dispute-resolution mechanisms and mutual-assistance clauses, making it easier for payroll teams to resolve audits on either side of the border.
Italy is the third of Switzerland’s neighbours (after France and Germany) to cement post-pandemic home-office thresholds. Observers expect Bern and Rome to revisit the limit in 2028, when EU social-security coordination rules may permit a higher 49.9 percent telework threshold already adopted by several EFTA states.
