Italy EOR or an Italian company: which route fits
Last reviewed
The short answer
An Employer of Record fits when a company wants people working in Italy soon and does not yet have the headcount or the permanence in the market to justify running an Italian company of its own.
The employment terms are the same on either route, because they come from Italian law and the collective agreement rather than from the structure. The same collective agreement grade and minimum, the same four weeks of leave, the same severance accruing from day one, the same notice. What changes is who carries the payroll, the contributions, the filings and the collective-agreement compliance and how quickly someone can start.
A company that employs directly in Italy carries the Italian payroll administration, the social contributions and the statutory reporting itself, from the first hire.
What is the same on either route?
Almost everything the employee experiences and that is the part worth settling first.
The employment terms come from Italian law and the collective agreement rather than from the structure the employer chooses. The same collective agreement grade and minimum, the same four weeks of leave, the same twelve national public holidays, the same severance accruing from the first day, the same notice by grade and length of service. Since 1 May 2026 the pay floor those agreements set has statutory force either way.
So the decision is not about what the employee gets. It is about who carries the machinery that delivers it and how soon someone can start.
What actually differs?
Who holds the registrations, who runs the monthly cycle, and what has to exist before a start date.
| Consideration | Employer of Record | Own Italian company |
|---|---|---|
| Who employs the worker | An employer that already holds the Italian employer registrations | The company's own Italian company |
| The employment terms | Collective agreement grade and minimum, leave, holidays, notice, severance from day one | Identical and from the same sources |
| Monthly payroll and contributions | Run by the Employer of Record as part of a payroll it already operates | Run by the company, for its own headcount |
| Employer-side filings | Carried by the Employer of Record | Carried by the company |
| Collective agreement compliance | Part of running an established Italian payroll | Taken on by the company, including the grading decision |
| What has to exist before a start date | The contract, the grading and the pre-start notification | Incorporation and registration first, then the same three |
| Where it fits | A first hire, a small team, a market being tested, or a start date that will not wait | Sustained headcount in the market |
Two of those rows are worth reading together. The employment terms are identical and the compliance work behind them is not. An employer that already holds the Italian employer registrations carries the grading, the contributions and the filings as a matter of course, because it is running them anyway. For a company placing one or two people, the same work is a standing obligation taken on for a single hire.
When does an Italian company start to earn its cost?
Once headcount is sustained enough that running the machinery in-house is cheaper than paying someone to carry it.
That is a headcount and permanence question rather than a legal one. An Employer of Record fits a first hire, a small team, a market being tested, or a start date that will not wait. An Italian company starts to earn its cost when payroll, contributions, collective-agreement compliance and statutory filings are being run often enough that the fixed cost of running them internally is lower than the fee for having them run.
The move between the two is not a cliff. Where the employer, the receiving entity and the employee agree to transfer the contract rather than end it, length of service can be preserved and the accrued severance taken over by the receiving entity, which matters in Italy because notice and severance both scale with service. Where a business or branch actually transfers, article 2112 of the Civil Code preserves both by operation of law. Otherwise the first relationship ends and article 2120 requires the accrued severance to be paid out at that point.
The provider
About Aspirock
Aspirock is an Employer of Record and payroll provider operating across 70+ countries from six global offices, founded on more than 22 years of operational EOR experience and supporting more than 5,000 workers. Every client works with a named account team that owns the deployment end to end, so contracts, payroll, visas, and compliance filings in each market are handled by people accountable for the outcome.
For hires in Italy that means Italian payroll with IRPEF withheld at source, contributions to INPS and workplace injury cover with INAIL, the pay grade and minimum set by the applicable national collective agreement and the trattamento di fine rapporto accrued from the first day of service under article 2120 of the Civil Code.
Common questions
Frequently asked questions
Last reviewed
It turns on headcount, permanence and speed rather than on the employment terms, which are the same either way. An EOR fits a first hire, a small team, a market being tested, or a start date that will not wait. An Italian company starts to earn its cost once headcount is sustained enough that running payroll, contributions, collective-agreement compliance and statutory filings in-house is cheaper than paying someone to carry them. Aspirock provides the Employer of Record route in Italy and prices it from the contribution stack that applies to the actual salary.
Somministrazione di lavoro is the supply of workers by an agency to a business that then directs them and Italy regulates it through Legislative Decree 81/2015 and Legislative Decree 276/2003. It is conducted through an agency authorised by the Ministry of Labour and entered on the albo delle agenzie per il lavoro. Article 35 of Legislative Decree 81/2015 then gives the supplied worker overall pay and conditions no less favourable than employees of the user at the same level doing the same job and access to the social and welfare services the user's own staff at that site enjoy, apart from those that depend on membership of an association or cooperative or on length of service. The same article makes the user jointly and severally liable with the agency for pay and social security contributions, so both sides are answerable for the worker being paid correctly.
It depends on how the move is structured. Where the employer, the receiving entity and the employee agree to transfer the contract rather than end it, length of service can be preserved and the accrued TFR taken over by the receiving entity, which matters in Italy because notice and severance both scale with service. Where a business or branch actually transfers, article 2112 of the Civil Code preserves both by operation of law. Otherwise the first relationship ends and article 2120 requires the accrued TFR to be paid out at that point. Aspirock supports the transfer of employment to a client's own entity when that point arrives.
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General guidance on Italy employment rules, reviewed 6 August 2026. Rates and rules change. This is not legal or tax advice for a specific situation.