Schedule RW: who files it, what goes in it and when you are exempt

Sara lives in Turin and has spent two years working remotely for a company in Munich. Her salary lands in a German account whose balance peaked at €13,500 during the year, with an average balance of €6,200. Her accountant asks whether she filled in schedule RW. Sara has never heard of it, and assumed that any account under €15,000 was outside every reporting rule anyway.

One schedule, two jobs

Schedule RW of the Redditi Persone fisiche return carries a long official title: foreign investments and financial assets, monitoring, IVIE and IVAFE. Behind it sit two separate jobs, and it pays to keep them apart from the start, because a taxpayer can owe one without owing the other.

The first job is to inform. The tax authority wants to know which assets people resident in Italy hold outside the country, even when those assets earned nothing during the year. This is tax monitoring, the reporting duty set by article 4 of decree-law 167 of 1990, which the Revenue Agency's IVIE and IVAFE pages cite by name.

The second job is to tax. The same schedule is where two wealth taxes on foreign assets are worked out: IVIE, charged on the value of property located abroad, and IVAFE, charged on the value of financial products, current accounts and savings books held outside Italy. The schedule also handles the tax on the value of crypto-assets.

Separating the two jobs heads off the most common mistake, which is to think that no tax due means nothing to report. Monitoring can apply with zero tax, and a tax can fall due on an asset that is itself exempt from monitoring. Sara's situation shows exactly that.

Who must file schedule RW

The 2026 Redditi instructions, as quoted on the Revenue Agency's page for the schedule, put individuals resident in Italy first: anyone who holds investments or financial assets abroad. What counts is tax residence, not nationality. A foreign national living in Italy is caught; an Italian who has moved abroad is not.

The kind of holding is drawn widely. Assets held by ownership or under any other right in rem are included, however they were obtained. A flat inherited from a grandparent, an account opened during a posting abroad, shares received as a gift: how the asset arrived does not change the duty to report it.

Since 2020 the duty has reached beyond individuals. The agency's IVIE and IVAFE pages name non-commercial bodies and resident simple partnerships bound by the monitoring rules as taxpayers too, and for IVIE the page adds general and limited partnerships of the Italian snc and sas type.

This course follows the most frequent case, the individual. Anyone running a simple partnership or a non-commercial body will find the rules that concern them on the same pages, starting with the IVAFE charge on accounts, which is set at a different level for taxpayers who are not individuals.

What goes in the schedule

Foreign investments start with real estate: houses, farmland and building plots located outside Italy. For IVIE the agency lists who owes the tax: owners, holders of usufruct, use, habitation, emphyteusis or surface rights, holders of concessions over state-owned land, and lessees under a finance lease.

Foreign financial assets cover current accounts and savings books at foreign banks, as well as shares, bonds, fund units and other financial products held through foreign intermediaries. These are the assets on which IVAFE is calculated, where it applies.

Crypto-assets get a mention of their own. The schedule must also be completed for crypto held through wallets, digital accounts or other storage and custody systems, and to settle the tax on their value. How gains on crypto-assets are taxed is a different question, and this course leaves it aside.

• Property located abroad, whatever its use, including land and building plots
• Current accounts and savings books with foreign banks
• Shares, bonds, fund units and other financial products held abroad
• Crypto-assets in wallets, digital accounts or other custody systems
• Rights in rem over the same assets, such as usufruct or bare ownership

A foreign asset belongs in the schedule even in a year when it earned nothing. A seaside house in Croatia used only in summer and never let produces no income to declare anywhere else, yet it still goes into schedule RW, where the IVIE is worked out and the monitoring duty is met.

The exemption for accounts up to 15,000 euros

There is a monitoring exemption designed for small accounts. According to the instructions reproduced by the agency, the duty does not arise for bank deposits and current accounts held abroad whose highest combined value reached during the tax year does not exceed 15,000 euros, as provided by article 2 of law 186 of 2014.

Three words in that rule deserve a slow read. Highest value means the peak reached during the year, not the balance on 31 December and not the average. Combined means every foreign deposit and account is added together. Bank deposits and current accounts means that securities, property and crypto-assets get no benefit from this exemption.

Then comes the closing sentence of the rule, the one Sara had never seen: the duty to fill in the schedule stands wherever IVAFE is owed. The exemption lifts the monitoring duty, not the tax. If the account generates IVAFE, the schedule must be completed even below 15,000 euros.

For current accounts held by individuals, IVAFE is a flat 34.20 euros per account or savings book, and it is not owed when the average annual balance shown on the statements stays at or below 5,000 euros. The two tests therefore measure different things: the peak decides monitoring, the average decides the tax.

On the average balance, the IVAFE page adds two practical points. All accounts and savings books held with the same intermediary count together, whatever part of the year each one was open. For joint accounts, each holder counts only the share of the balance attributable to them.

Schedule RW or schedule W of the 730

Holding assets abroad does not, by itself, force anyone onto the Redditi return. The agency's page on schedule W explains that the simplified 730 return can be used to report foreign investments and financial assets and to work out IVAFE, IVIE and the tax on crypto-assets.

Schedule W of the 730 does the same work as schedule RW. The 730 instructions send the reader straight to the schedule RW instructions of the Redditi return for the data to enter. The container changes, the substance does not: same assets, same small-account exemption, same taxes.

Schedule W also has sections for payments and carried-over amounts: line W6 for IVAFE and line W7 for IVIE, where you enter any surplus from the previous return, any surplus offset through the F24 form and the advances paid under the dedicated tax codes. The second module comes back to those codes.

Which return to use therefore depends on the taxpayer's overall position, not merely on owning something abroad. An employee with a foreign account can stay with the 730; someone who files the Redditi return for other reasons completes schedule RW there and does not repeat it in a 730.

Foreign currencies and deadlines

Many foreign assets are denominated in something other than euros: an account in Swiss francs, shares listed in dollars, a flat bought in pounds. The IVIE page recalls that from tax year 2013 a measure issued by the Director of the Revenue Agency on 18 December 2013 sets the general conversion rule.

The euro equivalent of every figure in the schedule is computed using the monthly exchange rates published in the measure the agency issues each year for income tax purposes. Neither your bank's rate nor the rate on the day you prepare the return is the right one.

Schedule RW follows the Redditi calendar. For 2026, covering tax year 2025, the agency gives an electronic filing window from 15 April to 2 November 2026, because 31 October falls on a Saturday. Where a paper return is still allowed, it is lodged at a post office between 15 April and 30 June 2026.

The filing deadline is not the payment deadline. IVIE and IVAFE are paid under the income tax rules, with a balance and advances due in June and November. Anyone who waits for the autumn to prepare the schedule risks discovering, too late, a tax that should have been paid in June.

Gathering the paperwork first

Schedule RW is only as good as the documents behind it. For each foreign account you need statements covering the whole year: they give both the highest value reached, which decides monitoring, and the average balance, which decides IVAFE. A single year-end statement will not do.

For securities you need the foreign intermediary's reports showing market value on 31 December or on the date of sale. For property you need the document stating the local cadastral value, or else the purchase deed. Co-owners must know their exact share, since every calculation is scaled to it.

• Full-year statements for every foreign account or savings book
• Securities reports with the value on 31 December or at the date of disposal
• Local cadastral valuation or purchase deed for each property
• Purchase and sale dates, to count months and days of holding
• Receipts for any wealth tax paid abroad

It makes sense to assemble this file every spring, even when you expect to be exempt. Only with the statements in hand do you find out whether a small account crossed the 15,000 euro peak for a few days, or whether its average drifted above 5,000 euros.