Content developed with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed by the author.
Italian tax code, notarial power of attorney from Brazil, and the three costs no estate agent mentions before you sign
A buyer based in São Paulo signed a preliminary sale contract, paid a deposit of €30,000, and booked flights to Verona. Three weeks before closing, the Italian notary refused to proceed: the wire transfer from Brazil lacked documented origin-of-funds evidence and the power of attorney, executed before a local notary in Brazil, had been apostilled by the wrong authority. The closing was postponed. The seller served a formal demand. The deposit was at risk.
That sequence is not exceptional. It is, in our experience, the standard failure mode for Brazilian buyers of Italian property. The fix is procedural — but only if you know the steps before you sign anything.
Italian notaries have always been obliged entities under Legislative Decree No. 231 of 21 November 2007 (D.Lgs. 231/2007), Italy's core anti-money laundering statute. AML in Italy is mainly governed by Legislative Decree No. 231/2007, aligned with EU AML Directives. Notaries must perform comprehensive customer due diligence by verifying client identity, establishing the purpose of transactions, and maintaining adequate records. What has intensified since 1 January 2026 is cross-border scrutiny: the Agenzia delle Entrate — Italy's Revenue Agency — has tightened Common Reporting Standard cross-checks on non-resident purchasers using foreign-sourced funds. Brazilian buyers are now routinely asked at the notarial deed of sale (the rogito notarile) stage to produce a documented source-of-funds dossier. Fail to prepare it and the notary will be unable to complete the deed.
Italy operates the Segnalazione di Operazione Sospetta reporting system through the Unità di Informazione Finanziaria at the Bank of Italy. Italian notaries are required to report cash transactions above €5,000 and any suspicious transaction regardless of size. That is not a technicality. It means your notary has a personal legal duty to refuse if the paperwork is not in order — regardless of how long you have been negotiating or however large the deposit already paid.
You cannot buy Italian property — or sign any binding Italian deed — without an Italian tax code (codice fiscale), the 16-character alphanumeric identifier issued by the Agenzia delle Entrate. Everyone who has any financial, administrative, or legal interaction in Italy needs a codice fiscale. This includes non-resident property buyers, anyone opening a bank account or signing a contract in Italy.
If residing abroad, you can apply for your codice fiscale at the nearest Italian consulate. Rather than an in-person visit, most consulates will direct you to an online application through the Fast IT portal. Processing times vary by consular workload. Through an Italian consulate, the process takes 3–15 working days; through a delegate in Italy, 1–2 days, often same-day if documents are complete.
Here is what the guides omit. The Italian consulates in Brazil — São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre — each have their own queue and their own documentary requirements. Verify their requirements in advance. Some consulates require evidence of prior unsuccessful attempts through other channels before accepting your application. Some ask for your birth certificate and/or other documents. Since July 2024 all Italian consulates started applying much stricter policies, which became even more stringent in 2025. The standard form is the Modello AA4/8, available on the Agenzia delle Entrate website, but the consulate may require additional supporting documents in Portuguese translation.
The practical risk: a preliminary sale contract (compromesso) with a fixed closing date signed before the codice fiscale is in your hand is a contract you may not be able to perform. Start the consulate process at least six to eight weeks before the compromesso date, not after.
Yes — but the procedure is specific and every step is mandatory. A power of attorney (procura speciale) executed in Brazil must go through three distinct stages before an Italian notary will accept it.
First, the document must be executed before a Brazilian tabelião (public notary). The tabelionato procedure requires your personal appearance, identity verification, and a precise description of the powers granted —h Italian property address, which acts, which price range. A generic power is insufficient: the Italian notary must be able to verify that the agent's acts fall within the scope of the mandate.
Second, the procura especial must be apostilled under the Hague Convention. In Brazil, apostilas for notarial acts are issued by the Conselho Nacional de Justiça (CNJ). This is not a consular stamp. Many buyers — and some agents — confuse the two, producing an invalid document.
Third, the apostilled document must be translated into Italian by a tradutora juramentada (sworn translator registered with the Junta Comercial). The Italian notary must verify all three steps — execution, apostille, and sworn translation — before the day of closing. Send the complete dossier to the Italian notary at least two weeks in advance. Do not arrive at the rogito with originals you have never had reviewed.
Title only passes on the date the rogito (notarial deed) is signed and the deed is inscribed in the Italian property registry. Until that moment, your rights rest entirely on the compromesso and the quality of the preparatory documents.
Every agent quotes you three numbers: registration tax (imposta di registro), notary fee, and agency commission. Those are correct. They are also incomplete.
The standard costs. Under D.P.R. 131 of 26 April 1986 (D.P.R. 131/1986), the tax base for registration tax on a private resale is the cadastral value under the prezzo-valore system — not the purchase price. Registration tax is charged at 2% for a first home or 9% for a standard purchase. As a Brazilian resident who will not relocate to Italy, you are buying a second home: 9% applies. A Milan private resale listed at €950,000 often produces registration tax of about €16,200 on its cadastral base, versus €85,500 if tax ran on full market price. A Tuscan farmhouse at €780,000 with a modest rendita catastale produces a cadastral value of around €151,200, so registration tax at 9% equals about €13,608. Add flat cadastral and mortgage taxes of €50 each, and the notary's professional fee — typically between €2,000 and €5,000 for mid-range residential property, more for complex deals. Agent commissions are typically 2–4% of the purchase price, split or paid by the buyer.
Cost one: the prima casa trap and the 18-month clock. Some sellers' agents will suggest you claim the reduced 2% registration tax rate — the prima casa (first-home) relief. Non-residents buying a resale second home in Italy pay 9% registration tax on cadastral value. Italian residents qualify for 2% prima casa registration tax; non-residents are excluded unless they transfer actual residence to Italy. If you claim the exemption, you must establish legal residence in the Italian municipality where the property is located within 18 months of the deed date. Miss that deadline and the Agenzia delle Entrate issues a back-tax demand for the difference between 2% and 9%, plus interest and a penalty of 30% of the unpaid tax. That alone can exceed €10,000 on a modest purchase.
Cost two: annual IMU you did not model. IMU — Imposta Municipale Unica — is the annual property tax that every Italian municipality levies on second homes, and for any owner not registered as a permanent resident at the property, the home is automatically classified as seconda casa. IMU averages 1.0% to 1.3% of the cadastral value. On a property with a cadastral value of €150,000, that is €1,500 to €1,950 per year in property tax — every year, regardless of whether you rent it out or leave it empty.
Cost three: the rental income tax that changes the investment case. This is the one that genuinely surprises buyers. If you intend to rent the property — through an agency, through Airbnb, or directly — Italian tax applies to that income. Non-resident landlords must declare Italian rental income in Italy and can generally choose between two regimes: progressive IRPEF or the flat-rate cedolare secca. Rental income is often taxed under the optional cedolare secca flat-tax regime at 21% (or 10% for certain regulated leases), which replaces IRPEF and related surcharges but does not allow expense deductions.
Unlike in Brazil, where rental income is taxed on a net basis after deductible expenses under the Imposto de Renda Pessoa Física regime, Italy's cedolare secca is a gross-income tax: you pay 21% on every real collected, with no deductions for management fees, maintenance, or insurance. On a €1,200-per-month rental (€14,400 per year), that is €3,024 in Italian income tax before any Brazilian obligations. Model this before you finalise the yield calculation. It is governed by D.P.R. 22 December 1986, No. 600 (D.P.R. 600/1973 and subsequent amendments) and the Testo Unico delle Imposte sui Redditi.
Nemo dat quod non habet — one cannot give what one does not have. The seller cannot transfer clean title; you cannot transfer a valid power of attorney; your notary cannot execute a lawful deed. Each link in the chain must hold before closing.
The contrast with Brazilian conveyancing is instructive. In Brazil, a property purchase is completed before a tabelião de notas, and the transfer of title is registered in the Cartório de Registro de Imóveis. The sequence has similarities — both systems are civil-law, notary-centred, and require registration for title to pass — but the tax architecture is entirely different. Brazil does not impose an ongoing municipal wealth-based property tax comparable to Italy's IMU on all non-resident owners, nor does it apply a gross-income flat tax on rental receipts without deductions. Brazilian buyers typically model Italian property costs using domestic benchmarks. That is where the gap opens.
As Walter Bagehot wrote of financial institutions: the peculiarity of any system is its detail, not its general principle. The general principle of Italian property law is familiar enough. The detail is where the cost overruns live.
In our files the most common error is signing the preliminary sale contract (compromesso) and paying the deposit before confirming three things: (1) the codice fiscale is already issued, not merely applied for; (2) the procura speciale has been reviewed by the Italian notary and confirmed as formally sufficient; and (3) the source-of-funds dossier for the wire transfer has been assembled and pre-cleared. Any one of these gaps, discovered ten days before the rogito, can give the seller grounds to retain the deposit and terminate the contract.
Do I need to travel to Italy to buy a property there if I live in Brazil?
No. You can complete the entire purchase through a procura speciale (notarised power of attorney executed in Brazil, apostilled by the CNJ, and translated by a sworn translator). Your appointed representative signs the rogito in Italy on your behalf. You do not need to be present, but the power of attorney must be formally correct and reviewed by the Italian notary before the closing date.
Can the Italian notary refuse to complete my purchase?
Yes. Under D.Lgs. 231/2007, Italian notaries are mandatory anti-money laundering obliged entities and must independently verify the origin of purchase funds. If the source-of-funds documentation for your wire transfer from Brazil is incomplete or inconsistent, the notary has both the right and the legal duty to decline to proceed, regardless of how advanced the transaction is.
If I rent out the Italian apartment, do I owe tax in both Italy and Brazil?
Italy taxes rental income from Italian property regardless of where the landlord resides: you will owe either 21% under the cedolare secca (flat tax) regime or progressive IRPEF rates on gross Italian rental income. Brazil taxes its residents on worldwide income under IRPF rules. The Italy–Brazil double taxation convention (signed 3 October 1978 and in force) generally allocates the primary taxing right over immovable property income to Italy, with a credit mechanism in Brazil — but you will need advice in both jurisdictions to avoid double payment and to meet both filing obligations. Start that conversation before the compromesso, not after the first rental cheque arrives.
HREFLANG BLOCK:
Editorial Team — Panato Law Firm Staff
