Italy

Italy combines the standard European rulebook with an enforcement tool few other regulators have. The Commissione Nazionale per le Società e la Borsa — CONSOB — supervises investment firms, and since 2019 it has been able to act directly against unauthorised operators' websites.

The blackout power

CONSOB can order Italian internet service providers to block access to the websites of firms offering investment services without authorisation. It has used the power steadily, and publishes each order, so the cumulative list runs to many hundreds of domains. For a trader this has a practical consequence beyond the enforcement itself: a broker site that will not load from an Italian connection is worth checking against those orders before assuming a technical fault.

Trading conditions

The ESMA measures apply in full — 30:1 on major currency pairs, 20:1 on minors, gold and major indices, 10:1 on other commodities, 5:1 on individual shares, 2:1 on cryptocurrencies — together with negative balance protection, margin close-out at 50%, a ban on bonuses and the mandatory disclosure of the percentage of that broker's retail accounts that lose money. Binary options are prohibited for retail clients.

Many brokers serving Italy hold a licence in another EEA state and passport in. That is normal under MiFID II, and it means the compensation scheme is the licensing country's, not Italy's. Firms authorised in Italy fall under the Fondo Nazionale di Garanzia; a Cyprus-licensed broker leaves you with the Cypriot fund and its lower limit.

Tax

Capital gains from financial instruments are taxed at a flat rate, and the mechanism depends on the arrangement you choose with an Italian intermediary — regime amministrato, where the broker withholds and reports, or regime dichiarativo, where you declare yourself. A foreign broker cannot act as withholding agent, so an Italian resident using one carries the full reporting obligation, including the declaration of foreign-held assets. This is the single most common compliance gap for Italian traders and it is worth a commercialista's advice.

Checks before funding

Look the firm up in CONSOB's registers of authorised intermediaries and EU firms operating in Italy, confirm the entity named in your contract, and check the domain against CONSOB's published blocking orders.