Telework for cross-border workers living in Italy: how many days a year, and what happens beyond 25%?

One day a week at home in Como, Varese or Luino, and the rest at the office in Lugano, Mendrisio or Bellinzona: that is the pattern the agreement between Switzerland and Italy on the taxation of cross-border workers allows with no tax consequences. The figure most often quoted, 40%, does not apply to residents of Italy. This guide sets out the Italy-Switzerland rule: what it covers, how to convert it into days, what it changes for the tax of an existing or a new cross-border worker, what the texts do not say if the limit is exceeded, and why the threshold for social contributions is not the same.

1. What is the telework limit for a cross-border worker living in Italy?

25% of working time, over the calendar year, from home in Italy. The additional protocol to the agreement of 23 December 2020 between Switzerland and Italy on the taxation of cross-border workers (SR 0.642.045.43, text in French) provides that a cross-border worker may carry out no more than 25 per cent of their employment as telework, at home, in the State of residence, in the course of a calendar year, without this changing their status as a cross-border worker. For tax purposes, the salary for those days is then treated as if it had been earned in Switzerland, at the employer's premises.

The rule is no longer temporary. It was introduced by an amending protocol signed on 6 June 2024, published in the Official Compilation (AS 2026 104), which entered into force on 9 February 2026 once the approval procedures had been completed in both countries, and applies with effect from 1 January 2024. On the Italian side, the ratification law of 29 December 2025 was published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale on 19 January 2026. The text sets no end date: the two States will consult each other periodically on developments in telework, and the agreement as a whole is reviewed every five years.

For a full-time job, 25% represents one and a quarter days a week on average. The cap is, however, assessed over the whole year, not week by week: a week with two days of telework is not an overrun if the year stays within the 25% limit.

2. Why do people still talk about 40%?

Because 40% is the cap for cross-border workers who live in France, and for part of 2023 it was the cap for residents of Italy. The figure is right for the former and out of date for the latter.

• Residents of France: 40% of annual working time, whether in the eight cantons of the 1983 agreement or in Geneva and the other cantons outside that agreement, where the 2023 amendment to the France-Switzerland tax treaty has applied since 1 January 2026. Our guide to telework for cross-border workers living in France details both regimes.
• Residents of Italy in 2023: a mutual agreement signed on 28 November 2023 retroactively allowed up to 40% telework from 1 February to 31 December 2023, under the former 1974 agreement. From 1 July 2023, this tolerance only applied to cross-border workers who were already teleworking on 31 March 2022.
• Residents of Italy since 2024: 25%, with no exceptions.

3. Who can rely on the 25% rule?

Only a cross-border worker within the meaning of the 2020 agreement. The 25% tolerance does not create the status; it prevents its loss. The three conditions of Article 2(b) of the agreement, which apply to everyone, must therefore be met first:

• being tax resident in Italy, in a municipality located wholly or partly within 20 km of the border;
• working as an employee in the Swiss border region, that is, in Ticino, Graubünden or Valais, for an employer, a permanent establishment or a fixed base located in Switzerland;
• in principle returning every day to one's main home, with a tolerance of 45 days of non-return for work reasons per calendar year, holidays and sickness not counted.

An employee from Como working in Zurich, or a resident of Milan working in Lugano, is not a cross-border worker within the meaning of the agreement, whatever their permit. The Federal Tax Administration points out that the tax definition differs from that of the G permit: a G permit holder may not be a cross-border worker for tax purposes, and a Swiss national living in Italy may be one. Our guide to the Swiss G work permit covers the cross-border permit.

The protocol states that the 25% rule applies to all cross-border workers, including those covered by the transitional regime. Existing and new cross-border workers therefore have the same cap; only the way their salary is taxed differs, as section 6 explains.

4. What counts as telework?

The text covers a specific case: salaried work carried out as telework, at home, in the State of residence. Anything outside that framework is not expressly covered by the 25% tolerance. The table distinguishes what the text says from what it leaves open.

For situations that are not covered, the prudent course is to treat them as work carried out outside Switzerland, and therefore outside the tolerance, until the employer and the tax administration of the canton of employment have given a view. A week at a trade fair in Milan or two days working from the Ligurian seaside do not fall under the same rule as a day at home, and these are precisely the days that slip through the employee's count.

5. How many days is that, depending on your activity rate?

The cap is a percentage of your working time in the year. The lower the activity rate, the fewer telework days are possible. The examples below are based on a working assumption of 220 working days a year for a full-time job, after holidays and public holidays; redo the calculation with your own days. No specific rule for part-time work or an incomplete year has been published for Italy: these figures simply apply 25% to the time actually worked.

Two lessons. First, one fixed telework day a week leaves little room for the unexpected for a full-time employee, and none at 80%. Second, at 60%, the weekly day that seems harmless represents a third of working time. A useful benchmark: at the end of June, a full-time employee who has already teleworked more than 27 days will exceed the cap at the same pace.

6. Below 25%, how is telework taxed?

Exactly like the days spent at the office in Switzerland. The protocol says so in plain terms: the salary for telework days at home, up to 25% of working time, is considered, for tax purposes, as earned in the other State, at the employer's premises. Nothing changes, therefore, in how the tax is shared out, which does depend on the category of cross-border worker.

Two practical consequences. For an existing cross-border worker, a telework day within the limit creates no obligation in Italy. For a new cross-border worker, it does not shift any part of the salary to a different taxation: Switzerland generally withholds 80% of its tariff on the whole salary, then Italy taxes that salary under its own rules and credits the Swiss tax. The details of each category's regime, including the Italian tax return of a new cross-border worker, are beyond the scope of this guide; our guides to cross-border worker taxes and to withholding tax tariffs cover the basics, codes R to U included.

These days also count towards the financial compensation provided for in Article 9 of the agreement: until the 2033 tax year, Ticino, Graubünden and Valais pay the Italian border municipalities 40% of the tax levied on existing cross-border workers. Salary for telework within the limit remains salary taxed in Switzerland.

On the Swiss side, the legal basis for levying withholding tax on the salary for work carried out abroad has existed since 1 January 2025: the Federal Act of 14 June 2024 on the taxation of telework in an international context added to Article 91 of the Federal Act on Direct Federal Taxation. It makes income generated abroad by a cross-border worker from a neighbouring State subject to withholding tax, provided the applicable agreement gives Switzerland that right to tax. That is the case up to 25% for Italy.

7. What happens beyond 25%?

The guarantee of status falls away, and the texts do not say precisely what replaces it. The protocol allows no more than 25% without a change in status; it provides no regime for the case where the limit is crossed, and neither the Federal Tax Administration, nor the canton of Ticino, nor the Italian tax administration has published, to our knowledge as at 20 October 2026, a detailed rule on this point. What follows distinguishes what is written from what is a matter of risk.

What is written

• The text only considers as earned in Switzerland the salary for telework days up to 25% of working time; it says nothing about the days beyond.
• Outside the cross-border regime, the double taxation convention of 9 March 1976 applies. Its Article 15 reserves to the State of residence the salary from employment that is not exercised in the other State: a day worked in Italy is taxable there, a day worked in Switzerland is taxable in Switzerland.
• For another cap in the same agreement, the 45 days of non-return, the Federal Tax Administration writes that beyond it the person loses cross-border worker status for the year concerned.

The risk, category by category

By analogy with the 45 days, an overrun exposes the worker to losing cross-border worker status for the whole calendar year, not just for the excess days. If the administration adopts this reading:

• Existing cross-border worker: for that year, they lose taxation exclusively in Switzerland. The salary becomes subject to Italian tax, with a credit for the Swiss tax on the part worked in Switzerland, and the telework days fall to Italy.
• New cross-border worker: Swiss withholding is no longer limited to 80%; the canton of Ticino applies the ordinary tariffs A, B, C and H to cross-border workers who do not come under the agreement. Italy already taxes their salary; what changes is the amount of Swiss tax credited and the split between the two countries.

One question remains open for an existing cross-border worker: does a year of overrun make them lose the transitional regime for good? The protocol requires the conditions of the status to continue to be met, without saying more. The Federal Tax Administration accepts, in its FAQ, that an existing cross-border worker who leaves the 20 km zone and later returns to it recovers the transitional regime: nothing points to a permanent loss, but no text settles the case of telework. It is a question to put in writing to the tax administration of the canton of employment before, not after, a year at risk.

8. OASI or Italian social insurance: which threshold for contributions?

Social contributions follow a different threshold, and a different logic. Tax depends on the Italy-Switzerland tax agreement; social insurance depends on the European coordination rules and on the multilateral framework agreement on telework, which the Federal Social Insurance Office (FSIO) presents on its dedicated page. Italy has applied it in its relations with Switzerland since 1 January 2024.

The band between 25% and 49.9% is the real trap: you can remain fully insured in Switzerland there, with a valid A1 certificate, while having crossed the tax limit. Being compliant for OASI purposes says nothing about tax. Conversely, staying within the tax limit does not exempt you from the A1 certificate: at exactly 25%, the cross-border worker already falls within the scope of the framework agreement.

The A1 certificate: who, how, for how long?

• Who applies for it? The Swiss employer, with its OASI compensation office, on the ALPS platform (Applicable Legislation Portal Switzerland), which includes a “cross-border telework” case type.
• For how long? Three years at most, renewable.
• Retroactively? For an application filed since 1 July 2024, three months at most. A late application therefore leaves a period uncovered: it is better to file it as soon as telework begins.

The framework agreement does not apply to everyone. The FSIO excludes people who habitually carry out an activity other than telework in Italy, such as regular client visits or a self-employed side activity, those who also habitually work in another EU or EFTA State, those who have a second employer in the EU or EFTA, and the self-employed. A cross-border worker who teleworks and regularly meets clients in Lombardy therefore falls outside this framework.

9. What should the employer and the employee do?

Compliance with the 25% is assessed over the year, and no one other than the employee and their employer keeps the count day by day. One-off days are the easiest to forget: added month after month to the fixed weekly day, they are what push the worker over the cap in the second example in section 5.

For the Swiss employer

• Place each cross-border worker in the right category, existing or new, and apply the corresponding tariff: A, B, C or H for existing cross-border workers, R, S, T or U for new ones.
• Set out telework in writing, with an annual cap consistent with the employee's activity rate, rather than a simple number of days per week.
• Have the A1 certificate issued: on ALPS, under the framework agreement, as soon as telework reaches 25%, without waiting; below that, under the ordinary procedure.
• Warn the employee before assigning them tasks in Italy: client meetings, trade fairs or work sites are not telework from home.

For the employee

• Keep a dated record of telework days, office days and assignment days, separate from the non-return day counter.
• Keep evidence of presence in Switzerland: badge records, expense claims, border crossing or parking histories.
• Take stock at mid-year: beyond about 27 telework days at the end of June for a full-time job, the pace leads to an overrun.
• If in doubt about a particular day, second home, half-day or assignment, put the question in writing to the tax administration of the canton of employment.

10. Salary in francs, spending in euros: what to watch?

For a cross-border worker who lives in Italy, the salary arrives in Swiss francs while rent, loan repayments, groceries and, for a new cross-border worker, the balance of Italian tax are paid in euros. Telework changes nothing in this mechanism, but exceeding the 25% limit can change the net amount paid in francs and add a charge in euros the following year: that is the moment to know the real cost of conversion.

A bank that automatically converts the salary on receipt applies its own rate, on a date the employee does not choose. ibani is a Geneva-based financial intermediary affiliated with SO-FIT, a self-regulatory organisation (SRO), and not a bank: the salary in francs is converted at the market rate, plus a margin of 0.40% to 0.15% depending on the amount, at the moment you choose, then transferred to the euro account. The day's rate can be followed on our CHF-EUR converter, and our service for cross-border workers page presents the offer.

11. Frequently asked questions