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The 12-month filing window, the new self-assessment rule, and why missing the deadline now means penalties with no warning letter
How long does a Brazilian heir have to file an Italian succession declaration?
Twelve months. That is the statutory deadline under Legislative Decree 346/1990 (the Italian inheritance and gift tax code, known as the Testo Unico Successioni, or TUS), measured from the date of death. If the heir is abroad at the time of death, the same twelve-month period applies. There is no automatic extension because you live in Brazil.
From 1 January 2025 the rule changed in a way that takes foreign heirs by surprise. Previously, the Italian tax authority, the Agenzia delle Entrate, would issue a preliminary assessment notice after reviewing the declaration. Now, self-assessment applies: you calculate the tax, you pay it, and the Agenzia delle Entrate cross-checks the figures afterwards using Common Reporting Standard (CRS) data and the automatic exchange of financial information. No letter arrives first. If you are late or the figures are wrong, the penalties apply automatically.
The practical consequence for a Brazilian heir is stark. You will not receive an Italian tax office letter warning you that time is running out.
Yes, on the Italian assets. Italy taxes inheritance on a territorial basis when the deceased was not resident in Italy, and on a worldwide basis when the deceased was Italian-resident. If your relative owned property in Verona, a bank account in Milan, or shares in an Italian company, those assets fall within the scope of Italian inheritance tax regardless of where you live.
The rates under Legislative Decree 346/1990 are: 4% for direct-line heirs (children, spouses), with a per-heir allowance of €1,000,000; 6% for siblings, applied to the full value; and 8% for all other beneficiaries, also on the full value. A Brazilian heir who is a nephew or an unrelated legatee therefore pays 8% from the first euro, with no threshold.
Unlike inheritance in Brazil, where the Imposto sobre Transmissão Causa Mortis e Doação (ITCMD) is levied at the state level with rates ranging from 2% to 8% (capped by the Federal Senate at 8% under Senate Resolution No. 9/1992, though current proposals in the Brazilian Congress seek to raise this ceiling), Italy levies its tax at national level through a single federal filing. There is no Brazilian-Italian double taxation treaty specifically covering inheritance — so ITCMD paid in Brazil does not automatically reduce what you owe in Italy. Both obligations may apply to the same asset.
Most online guides describe the succession declaration as a bureaucratic formality. In cross-border Brazil-Italy matters, three issues consistently create the real problems.
The first is timing. Before an heir can file in Italy, they need an Italian tax code, the codice fiscale (the unique personal tax identifier). Brazilian residents obtain this through the Italian consulate in their city. In practice, consular appointment slots and document processing take between six and ten weeks. That time comes directly off the twelve-month window. A family that waits two or three months after the death before contacting a lawyer may already be facing a tight deadline before they have even started gathering documents.
The second trap is CRS data and dual declaration risk. Brazilian bank accounts and investment portfolios held by the deceased are subject to ITCMD in Brazil. Under the OECD's Common Reporting Standard, to which both Italy and Brazil are participating jurisdictions, Brazilian financial institutions report account data to the Italian tax authority for Italian-resident account holders — and vice versa. If the deceased held assets in Brazil that were not declared in the Italian succession filing, the Agenzia delle Entrate will, in many cases, already know about them. Self-assessment does not mean unmonitored assessment.
The third trap is the most legally significant. EU Regulation (EU) 650/2012 on matters of succession (Brussels IV) applies to deaths after 17 August 2015. Its default rule assigns the law governing the succession to the country of the deceased's last habitual residence. If your relative lived in Brazil at the time of death, Brazilian succession law — including Brazilian rules on forced shares and the rights of a surviving spouse — governs who inherits what in principle. But [text truncated — incomplete sentence]l govern how Italian assets are administered and taxed. The Italian dichiarazione di successione must still be filed. The applicable succession law and the applicable tax law are different questions, and they point to different answers.
There is a narrow exception. A deceased person who was an Italian national could, by a valid will, elect Italian succession law to govern their entire estate, including assets abroad (a so-called professio iuris under Article 22 of EU Regulation 650/2012). But a Brazilian will executed under Brazilian law is not automatically operative for Italian assets. The formal validity and the choice-of-law clause must be checked against EU Regulation 650/2012 before anyone relies on it.
Nemo plus iuris ad alium transferre potest quam ipse habet — no one can transfer to another more rights than they themselves possess. The point applies directly here: if the applicable succession law does not vest the asset in the heir in the first place, no Italian tax filing converts that position.
As Henry Maine observed in Ancient Law (1861), the concept of succession was always shaped by the collision between the universal and the particular — the general rule of inheritance and the specific assets, debts and jurisdictions it has to traverse. Cross-border estates reveal that collision in its sharpest form.
The core documents are as follows. You will need the death certificate of the deceased, apostilled and translated into Italian by a sworn translator (traduzione giurata). Brazil is a signatory to the Hague Apostille Convention; the apostille is issued by the Brazilian National Council of Justice (CNJ) via its online platform. You will also need documents proving your identity and your relationship to the deceased — birth certificates, marriage certificates where relevant — each apostilled and translated.
The codice fiscale for each heir is mandatory before the electronic filing can proceed. The form to request it at the Italian consulate is the Agenzia delle Entrate Form AA4/8.
For Italian property, a land registry search (the visura catastale, which is the official extract from the Italian land registry showing property ownership and cadastral values) must be obtained for each real estate asset. If the deceased held Italian bank accounts, a written statement of the balance at the date of death from each bank is required. Company shareholdings require a current extract from the Italian Companies Register.
The declaration itself is filed electronically through the Agenzia delle Entrate succession portal. Tax due is paid simultaneously by bank transfer using the Italian F24 payment form.
The penalties are significant and automatic. Under the TUS, a late filing within thirty days of the deadline attracts a reduced penalty of 0.1% per day (the so-called ravvedimento operoso procedure allows voluntary correction at a reduced rate). A filing between thirty days and ninety days late is subject to a 15% penalty on the tax due. Filing more than ninety days late but within one year attracts 30%. After one year the base penalty is 90%, with further increases possible if the omission is deemed fraudulent.
These penalties apply to the tax calculated on the assets. For an estate that includes, say, an Italian apartment valued at €400,000 held by a non-direct-line heir (rate 8%, no threshold), the base tax is €32,000. A 90% late-filing penalty on top of that figure is not a formality.
Under the pre-2025 system, a preliminary assessment notice would have given the heir at least some warning. That notice no longer exists for the self-assessed portion. The cross-check happens afterwards.
In our experience the most common error in Brazil-Italy succession files is treating the consular appointment for the codice fiscale as a task to address once everything else is ready. It should be the first step taken, ideally within the first two weeks after the death. Families who begin the inheritance process three or four months after bereavement — which is entirely understandable — are already running out of runway before a single document has been apostilled.
A second recurring problem: the Brazilian heir relies on a Brazilian will that does not contain a valid professio iuris electing Italian succession law, and proceeds to negotiate the distribution of the Italian estate on the assumption that Brazilian forced heirship rules apply in full. They do apply — but only alongside Italian tax procedure, which distributes the burden differently and may require the filing of the Italian declaration even for assets that Brazilian courts would have distributed without any Italian involvement.
Can I file the Italian succession declaration myself from Brazil without an Italian lawyer?
Technically, the Agenzia delle Entrate portal accepts direct filings. In practice, a non-resident heir without a codice fiscale, without Italian-language capability, and unfamiliar with cadastral valuations and the F24 payment system will find it very difficult. An error in the declared values triggers the same penalty regime as a late filing. Professional preparation is not a luxury in cross-border files.
Does the Italian inheritance tax replace the Brazilian ITCMD, or do I pay both?
You may pay both, on the same asset. There is no Italy-Brazil double taxation treaty covering inheritance taxes. ITCMD is levied by the Brazilian state where the deceased was domiciled or where the asset is located (for real estate); Italian inheritance tax is levied by Italy on Italian-sited assets regardless of where you live. The two systems run in parallel. The only mitigation available is through careful analysis of where the asset is legally sited and ensuring no asset is reported twice in the same jurisdiction.
If the deceased lived in Brazil and had no Italian will, who decides how the Italian property is divided?
EU Regulation (EU) 650/2012 makes Brazilian succession law the default governing law if the deceased was habitually resident in Brazil. Brazilian rules on the forced share and the rights of a surviving spouse therefore determine the division of the estate in principle. The Italian succession declaration and Italian inheritance tax, however, still apply to the Italian assets. The distribution may be governed by Brazilian law; the tax filing is governed by Italian law. Both must be addressed, and they must be addressed consistently.
HREFLANG BLOCK:
Editorial Team — Panato Law Firm Staff
