Wage Garnishment in Italy (Pignoramento dello Stipendio): The 1/5 Rule Explained

Pignoramento dello stipendio, wage garnishment, is the seizure of part of a debtor's pay to satisfy a creditor. Italian law does not let a creditor, including the tax authorities, take a salary in full. Art. 545 of the codice di procedura civile sets firm percentage ceilings, and a separate rule gives smaller salaries extra protection specifically against tax debts. This page works through the rules with concrete figures rather than just the bare percentages, including what happens if a garnishment takes more than the law allows.

For a wider look at consumer protections in Italy, see the Italy consumer rights section.

A salary or pension garnishment normally follows an earlier step: the creditor first needs an enforceable title, most often a decreto ingiuntivo that has become executive. See our companion page on debt collection and the decreto ingiuntivo process for how a private creditor gets to that point. Several of the euro figures below, particularly the pension protection floor, are revalued periodically, so this page notes the date each was verified.

Information verified on 21 July 2026. This page provides general legal information and does not constitute legal advice for an individual situation.

The baseline: one fifth of net pay

Art. 545, quarto comma, c.p.c. sets the general rule: sums owed as stipendio, salario, or another work related indennità, including amounts owed on termination of employment, can be seized up to one fifth (1/5) for taxes owed to the State, provinces, and municipalities, and in equal measure, also one fifth, for every other ordinary credit. The percentage is applied to net pay, after the ordinary deductions an employer already makes, not to gross salary.

This one fifth figure is the outer limit for an ordinary private creditor, a bank, a finance company, a supplier, a landlord with an enforceable judgment, and it is also the ceiling the statute sets for tax debts in this same article. What changes for tax debts, in practice, is a separate rule that can apply a smaller share on lower salaries, covered next.

A voluntary cessione del quinto is separate from a garnishment

The one fifth ceiling above applies to an involuntary garnishment, a seizure a court or the tax collection agency imposes without the employee's consent. It is a different thing from a cessione del quinto, a voluntary assignment of up to one fifth of net salary an employee agrees to when taking out certain consumer loans. Because the cessione del quinto rests on the employee's own consent rather than a creditor's seizure, it can run alongside a later, involuntary garnishment that itself reaches the one fifth ceiling or the graduated tax collection scale.

For someone already repaying a loan through a cessione del quinto, the one fifth garnishment ceiling described above is not automatically the most that can come out of their pay each month; a later, involuntary garnishment adds to what the cessione del quinto is already taking, rather than being blocked by it.

Tax debts on a lower salary: a graduated scale, not always 1/5

Agenzia delle Entrate Riscossione, the agency that collects tax debts, does not always take the full one fifth. Art. 72-ter of D.P.R. 602/1973 sets a graduated scale that depends on the size of the net salary or pay being garnished:

This is a threshold, not a marginal bracket system. The single rate that corresponds to the salary band applies to the whole payment; the amounts are not split and taxed at different rates the way personal income tax brackets work. A worked example makes the difference clear:

An ordinary private creditor does not get the benefit of this graduated scale. Whatever the salary, an ordinary debt stays capped at one fifth under art. 545, quarto comma, c.p.c.

How the seizure is actually served

A wage garnishment is not simply an order aimed at the debtor. It is executed as a pignoramento presso terzi, a seizure served on a third party, here the employer, who holds the money. Art. 543 c.p.c. requires the act to be notified to both the debtor and the employer, and to state the underlying credit, the enforcement title, and the earlier precetto, along with a warning to the employer not to dispose of the sums without a judge's order. The employer must then declare the employment relationship and the amounts owed, generally within 10 days, and if that declaration is not made, the amounts the creditor claims are treated as undisputed for the proceeding (art. 543 c.p.c.). In practice this means an employer, not the debtor personally, calculates and withholds the protected share described in this page from each pay period.

Alimony and maintenance debts: no fixed percentage

A credito alimentare, a maintenance or alimony debt, can also reach a debtor's salary, but art. 545 c.p.c. does not set a specific percentage for it the way it does for tax and ordinary debts. Instead, the president of the tribunal, or a judge they delegate, authorizes the share by decree, tailored to the case (art. 545, primo and terzo comma, c.p.c.). Anyone owed or owing maintenance should treat this as a court determined figure, not a fixed fraction, since the statute itself leaves the exact share to judicial discretion.

When garnishments overlap: a hard cap at one half

A debtor can face more than one creditor at once, for instance a tax debt collected by Agenzia delle Entrate Riscossione running alongside a private debt. Art. 545, quinto comma, c.p.c. sets a single overall limit for this situation: the combined amount seized from simultaneous garnishments can never exceed one half (1/2) of the relevant pay, however many separate causes are competing for it.

Take a net salary of 3.000 euro a month facing both an ordinary private debt (1/5, or 600 euro) and a tax debt within the graduated scale's 1/7 band (429 euro, rounded). Added together that is 1.029 euro, still under half of 3.000 euro (1.500 euro), so both garnishments run in full. If a third garnishment were added that would otherwise push the total past 1.500 euro, the excess is not taken; the one half ceiling controls regardless of how the individual percentages would otherwise add up.

If more than the protected share is taken

The percentages and caps described on this page are legal limits, not guidance an employer or creditor can choose to exceed. If a garnishment takes more than the applicable ceiling, whether that means more than the 1/5 or graduated rate on a single garnishment or more than the 1/2 cap on simultaneous garnishments, the debtor can raise it before the giudice dell'esecuzione, the judge overseeing the enforcement proceeding, through an opposizione agli atti esecutivi. The seizure remains ineffective as to the portion that exceeds the protected limit.

Pensions get extra protection

A pension, or an indemnity that takes the place of one, is not just subject to the ordinary limits above. Art. 545 c.p.c. adds a floor specific to pensions: they cannot be seized below double the maximum monthly assegno sociale, with a statutory minimum of 1.000 euro if that calculation would otherwise come out lower. Only the amount above that protected floor is seizable, and then within the ordinary limits described above.

For 2026, INPS set the assegno sociale at 546,24 euro a month. Double that figure is 1.092,48 euro, which is higher than the statutory 1.000 euro floor, so 1.092,48 euro a month is the amount currently protected in full. Only pension income above that level can be reached by a garnishment, and even then subject to the same one fifth, graduated tax scale, and one half concurrency rules that apply to salary. Because the assegno sociale is revalued periodically, this protected figure should be rechecked against the current INPS figure rather than assumed to hold indefinitely.

Money already in a bank account follows a different rule

The rules above govern the ongoing right to future pay. Once salary, pension, or a termination indemnity is actually credited to the debtor's own bank or postal account, a separate provision in art. 545 c.p.c. applies. If the credit happened before the seizure order took effect, that money is protected up to triple the assegno sociale; only the amount above that is seizable, and again within the ordinary limits. If the credit happens on or after the date of seizure, the money is instead treated under the ordinary rules described above, without this larger buffer.

For 2026, triple the assegno sociale works out to 1.638,72 euro. A debtor whose paycheck has already landed in their account before a seizure order arrives keeps more of it protected than one whose pay is credited afterward.

TFR and termination pay follow the same rules as salary

Severance pay, TFR, and other sums owed because employment ended are explicitly listed in art. 545 c.p.c. alongside ordinary stipendio and salario, and they are treated the same way for garnishment purposes: capped at one fifth for an ordinary creditor, subject to the same graduated scale where Agenzia delle Entrate Riscossione is the creditor, and folded into the same one half concurrency cap where more than one garnishment runs at once. See our companion page on how TFR is calculated for the underlying entitlement itself.

A change coming on 1 January 2027

D.Lgs. 33/2025 consolidates Italian tax payment and collection law into a new single text and, from the date it takes effect, repeals D.P.R. 602/1973, the law that currently houses art. 72-ter and the graduated tax garnishment scale described above. That date was set at 1 January 2027. The reform is a recodification rather than an announced policy reversal, but this page has not verified what the successor provision will say, and the specific euro thresholds and fractions may be renumbered or updated when it takes effect. Readers relying on the tax collection figures on this page after that date should confirm them against the current law rather than this page.

If garnishments are only one part of a wider debt problem, our page on sovraindebitamento, Italy's court procedure for over-indebted consumers, covers the routes to restructure or discharge unaffordable debt through the courts. For the wider landscape of Italian law this site covers, see our Italy hub.