Concept
For two decades the advance ruling was the quietest document in a private client's file. It delivered certainty on a contested point — entitlement to a special regime, the characterisation of income, a residence history — and went nowhere: the EU ruling exchange introduced in 2015 was built around corporate structures and expressly carved out rulings concerning the tax affairs of individuals. A client holding an Italian or Portuguese confirmation under a new-resident regime held a document whose existence the country of departure learned about only from the client.
Directive (EU) 2023/2226 removed that carve-out. It is known as DAC8 and is discussed almost exclusively as the crypto directive, but its Article 1 does two further things: it rewrites the definition of an advance cross-border ruling and it replaces Article 8a(4) of Directive 2011/16/EU — the provision that kept individuals out of the exchange. Transposition was due by 31 December 2025 and the rules apply from 1 January 2026.
What counts as an advance cross-border ruling
The definition sits in Article 3, point 14 of Directive 2011/16/EU. It covers any agreement, communication or other instrument or action with similar effects — including one issued, amended or renewed in the context of a tax audit — which meets five cumulative conditions.
First, it is issued, amended or renewed by or on behalf of the government or the tax authority of a Member State or of its territorial or administrative subdivisions, irrespective of whether it is effectively used. Second, it is issued to a particular person or group of persons and that person is entitled to rely on it. Third, it concerns the interpretation or application of a legal or administrative provision concerning the administration or enforcement of national tax law. Fourth, it relates to a cross-border transaction, or to the question whether activities carried on in another jurisdiction create a permanent establishment, or to the question whether or not a natural person is resident for tax purposes in the Member State issuing the ruling. Fifth, it is made in advance — of the transaction, of the activities potentially creating a permanent establishment, or of the filing of the return covering the period in which the transaction or activity took place.
The fourth condition is the amendment made by Article 1(1)(b) of Directive 2023/2226. Before it, the residence of an individual entered the definition only indirectly, through a cross-border transaction; it is now named expressly and sits alongside permanent establishment. That reclassifies a whole family of national procedures: an advance confirmation that the applicant was not resident in the country for the last nine of ten years, or the last five years, answers the residence question by definition rather than by coincidence.
The other four conditions still operate as a filter. A general administrative position addressed to an open class of taxpayers fails the second condition. A document that certifies a fact without interpreting a provision fails the third. A confirmation issued after the relevant return has been filed fails the fifth. It is on those three boundaries that the national procedures examined below separate.
The two gateways
Article 1(3)(a) of Directive 2023/2226 replaces Article 8a(4) of Directive 2011/16/EU. The new text keeps the general rule — the exchange does not apply where an advance cross-border ruling exclusively concerns and involves the tax affairs of one or more natural persons — and carves out of it a date plus two alternative gateways.
Amount. The ruling is exchanged where the amount of the transaction or series of transactions exceeds EUR 1 500 000, or the equivalent in another currency, but only if that amount is referred to in the ruling itself. The directive adds a counting rule: in a series of transactions regarding different goods, services or assets the amount comprises the total underlying value, and amounts are not aggregated where the same goods, services or assets are transacted several times.
Residence. The ruling is exchanged where it determines whether a person is or is not resident for tax purposes in the Member State issuing it. There is no threshold here at all.
The gap between the two gateways is the practical point. The first is easy to avoid: the threshold bites only on an amount stated in the ruling, and a request about entitlement to a regime is not hard to frame without a figure, leaving nothing to compare against. The second cannot be avoided by drafting, because it describes the subject matter of the request rather than its presentation. For a client on a special regime this means the standard document in the file is exchanged because of how it is built, not because of how large the capital is.
The directive did carve one category out of the residence gateway. The exchange of rulings concerning natural persons does not include rulings on taxation at source with regard to non-residents' income from employment, directors' fees or pensions. The carve-out is aimed at high-volume withholding procedures and is drafted as a derogation from the residence gateway alone; the amount gateway continues to apply to that category, so a ruling of that kind stating an amount above EUR 1 500 000 is exchanged under the general rule.
There is no wealth threshold in the directive. A dedicated criterion for high-value individuals was discussed at proposal stage but did not survive into the adopted text: the terms high-net-worth and net worth do not appear in the directive at all, and the only monetary figure in Article 8a(4) is the EUR 1 500 000 attached to a transaction.
The timing trigger and the cost of renewal
A ruling enters the exchange if it was issued, amended or renewed after 1 January 2026. The three verbs carry equal weight: any one of them opens the perimeter.
There is no retrospective reach, and that follows from the structure of the provision rather than from silence. The historic look-back for rulings sits in Article 8a(2) of Directive 2011/16/EU and covers rulings from 2012 to 2016; Article 8a(4) as amended disapplies both paragraph 1 and paragraph 2 to individuals outside its own carve-out. A ruling in the tax affairs of an individual issued in 2020 or 2025 is exchanged under neither gateway for as long as it merely continues to apply.
The practical consequence lives in the third verb. Special-regime confirmations are rarely open-ended: they carry a validity period tied to the regime or to the year for which they were issued, and they come with a procedure for renewal or for updating on a change of circumstances. A renewal after 1 January 2026 brings the document into the exchange in full. What is exchanged is the ruling, and the date of renewal is the date Article 8a(4) tests; the provision contains no notion of partial exchange limited to what changed. The same is true of amendment: adding a family member to the regime, adjusting the list of excluded jurisdictions, correcting the described facts — each such approach reopens the document.
Two planning questions follow that did not exist before 2026. First, what validity period the existing confirmation carries and whether a renewal date is approaching. Second, whether a new issue can be resolved without touching the existing ruling — by a separate narrow request that does not itself engage the residence gateway, instead of amending the old one. Both are technical questions, and both decide whether the document stays outside the exchange or enters it within the next half-year.
Who receives the data, and how much of it
The recipient is not only the country of departure. Article 8a(1) requires the competent authority of the issuing Member State to communicate the information to the competent authorities of all other Member States and to the European Commission. The mechanism is the central directory established under Article 21(5) of Directive 2011/16/EU: the information is recorded there, and the competent authorities of all Member States have access to what is recorded. An Italian or Greek ruling is visible to twenty-six administrations at once, whether or not the applicant has any connection to each of them.
The Commission's access is cut back. Article 8a(8) withholds four items from it, two of which are decisive: the identification of the person and the summary of the ruling. The Commission sees an anonymised skeleton and may use it only for statistics; Member State administrations see everything.
The content of the communication is set by Article 8a(6). Article 1(3)(b) of Directive 2023/2226 rewrote two entries in that list: they previously excluded the identification of natural persons outright, and the exclusion is now lifted for rulings communicated under paragraphs 1 and 4.
| Item communicated | What it means for a private client | Visible to the Commission |
|---|---|---|
| Identification of the person | The applicant is named — the former carve-out for natural persons is gone | No |
| Summary of the ruling | Description of the transactions or activities and anything else that helps assess a potential tax risk, without disclosing commercial, industrial or professional secrets | No |
| Dates of issuance, amendment, renewal | The very date that determines whether the perimeter applies | Yes |
| Start and end of the validity period | Communicated if specified in the ruling — the horizon of the regime becomes known | Yes |
| Type of the ruling | Classification under the issuing state's own taxonomy of procedures | Yes |
| Amount of the transaction or series of transactions | Communicated if referred to in the ruling | Yes |
| Member States likely to be concerned | In practice this almost always includes the country of former residence | Yes |
| Other persons likely to be affected | The former carve-out for natural persons is lifted here as well | No |
| Basis of the information | Whether it is drawn from the ruling itself or from the request that led to it | Yes |
The deadline is set by Article 8a(5)(a): without delay after the ruling has been issued, amended or renewed and at the latest three months following the end of the half of the calendar year in which that happened. A ruling from the first half of 2026 goes out by 30 September 2026; one from the second half, by 31 March 2027.
The full text falls outside the automatic exchange and remains obtainable all the same: Article 8a(10) expressly allows a Member State to request additional information, including the full text of the ruling, by way of exchange on request. In this design the automatic channel works as a notification and the exchange on request supplies the substance.
Country analysis: what falls inside and what does not
The directive supplies a definition; it does not maintain a national register of procedures. Whether a given document is treated as an advance cross-border ruling is decided by the Member State itself, through its own classification practice and its own transposing rules. The readings below apply the five conditions of the definition and are not a verdict: each line ultimately turns on how the issuing state classifies the procedure at home.
| Procedure | What it does | Reading against the definition |
|---|---|---|
| Italy: interpello under Article 24-bis TUIR | Confirms that the applicant was not resident in Italy for nine of the ten preceding tax periods | Answers the residence question directly — caught by the residence gateway, with no amount to compare |
| Spain: Modelo 149 | Communicates the election of the Article 93 LIRPF regime; the administration issues a document certifying that the election was made | Poor fit: it certifies an election rather than interpreting a provision, and residence is a precondition of the regime |
| Spain: consulta vinculante under Articles 88–89 LGT | Binding answer on a contested point of application to the applicant's circumstances | Clear fit; which gateway applies depends on the subject of the particular request |
| Portugal: IFICI registration | Application by 15 January of the following year plus confirmation by the sector body — FCT, ANI, AICEP, IAPMEI, Startup Portugal | Most likely outside: it opens access to a statutory benefit and presupposes residence |
| Portugal: informação vinculativa under Article 68 LGT | Binding information on the taxpayer's position, including the conditions of tax benefits | Inside, and Portuguese law says so itself |
| Greece: approval under Article 5A of the Income Tax Code | Decision of the tax administration admitting the applicant to the regime on an application filed by 31 March | Open question: the act grants a regime but rests on a finding about the applicant's residence history |
| United Kingdom: non-statutory clearance | HMRC's position on a point not covered by a statutory clearance procedure | Outside: the United Kingdom is not a Member State and Article 8a does not reach it |
Italy
The Italian case is the clearest of the five, for two reasons. The first is subject matter: comma 1 of Article 24-bis TUIR admits to the regime individuals who have not been resident in Italy for at least nine of the ten tax periods preceding the start of the option, and that is precisely what the interpello tests. The second is the place of the procedure inside the regime: under comma 3 of the same article the option is exercised after obtaining a favourable answer to a specific interpello filed with the Agenzia delle Entrate under Article 11, comma 1 of Law 212 of 27 July 2000 — with effect from 20 December 2025 the reference is to letter f) of that provision instead of the former letter b). The advance ruling here is a component of entry into the regime rather than an optional precaution.
The Italian provision is notable for a second reason: it carried its own notification channel long before DAC8. The same comma 3 requires the applicant to state in the option the jurisdiction or jurisdictions of last tax residence, and requires the Agenzia delle Entrate to transmit that information to the tax authorities of those jurisdictions through the appropriate instruments of administrative cooperation. Until 2026 the country of departure learned that a person had declared a move; from 2026 it also receives the ruling itself. The regime is set out in Italy: flat tax for new residents.
Spain
Spanish entry into the regime is built on a different footing, and the difference between the two Spanish procedures rests on the third and fifth conditions of the definition.
Article 93 LIRPF addresses individuals who acquire Spanish tax residence as a result of relocation and may elect to be taxed under the non-resident income tax rules while remaining liable to IRPF. Residence is a precondition here, not the subject of a decision. The election is made by a communication on the prescribed form, and under Article 119(4) of the IRPF Regulation the administration issues the taxpayer, within ten working days, a document certifying that the special regime has been elected; the document exists to be shown to withholding agents. The act certifies a completed election without interpreting a provision — a poor fit with the third condition, and it decides nothing about residence.
The consulta vinculante is the mirror image. Under Article 89 LGT the answer to a written tax consultation binds the bodies of the tax administration in their relations with the applicant for as long as the legislation, the case law and the facts set out in the request remain unchanged, and the administration must apply the same criteria to any taxpayer whose facts and circumstances are identical. That is an interpretation of a provision, given in advance and addressed to a particular person: all five conditions are met. Which gateway applies depends on the subject — a request about the worldwide scope of employment income does not engage the residence gateway, a request about the existence of Spanish residence does.
DGT consultations are published in a searchable database, anonymised. The difference from the DAC8 channel matters: there the document travels with the taxpayer identified, because the former carve-out for natural persons has been lifted from the list of communicated items. The regime is set out in the Beckham Law.
Portugal
Portuguese law settles the classification of the informação vinculativa in its own text. Article 68(1) of the General Tax Law requires a request for binding information to be accompanied not only by a description of the facts whose legal and tax characterisation is sought, but also by the elements the tax and customs authority needs in order to ensure the mandatory and automatic exchange of information under administrative cooperation between the competent authorities of EU Member States and other jurisdictions — the cross-reference is to Decree-Law 61/2013, Portugal's transposition of the DAC. The procedure was designed as an exchangeable ruling from the outset; DAC8 merely widened the range of cases in which the exchange is triggered for an individual.
IFICI registration is built differently and most likely stays outside the perimeter. Article 58-A of the Tax Benefits Statute addresses individuals who become tax resident under Article 16(1) and (2) of the IRS Code and were not resident in Portugal in any of the five preceding years, and ties the benefit to a list of qualifying activities. The activity test is carried out by the relevant sector body, which reports the outcome to the tax authority; residence is a precondition here too. Procedure and deadlines are covered in Portugal IFICI.
Greece
Greece is the one case of the five where the answer is genuinely open. The Article 5A regime requires that the applicant was not a Greek tax resident for seven of the eight preceding years and invests at least EUR 500 000 in the Greek economy; the application is filed by 31 March and a decision on Article 5A is generally issued within sixty days. In form the act grants a regime rather than interpreting a provision, and on the third condition it can be read as an administrative decision conferring a benefit. But it cannot be reached without a finding about the applicant's residence history, and that finding is exactly the subject named in the fourth condition.
There is a further layer: Greece also operates a separate advance ruling procedure that fits the definition more obviously and through which the question of admission to the regime can likewise be put. The outcome depends on which of the two the Greek administration treats as exchangeable, and the question is not settled — Greek transposition of DAC8 is incomplete. The regime is set out in Greece: non-dom.
United Kingdom
HMRC's non-statutory clearance is an administrative position on a point not covered by a statutory clearance procedure, and in construction it belongs to exactly the same genus of advance ruling. It falls outside Article 8a for a reason unrelated to its content: the United Kingdom is not a Member State, Directive 2011/16/EU does not apply to it, and the EU central directory holds none of its rulings.
That does not put the document out of reach. Exchange on request and spontaneous exchange under the Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters and under bilateral tax treaties operate independently of the EU perimeter and cover documents of this kind. The difference is one of access rather than reach: the automatic channel operates by default and without a prompt, while an exchange on request requires a request and presupposes that the requesting administration already knows what to ask about.
Transposition status
DAC8 was to be transposed by 31 December 2025 and applies from 1 January 2026. Several Member States missed the deadline.
On 30 January 2026 the Commission opened infringement procedures by sending letters of formal notice to twelve Member States for failing to fully transpose Directive (EU) 2023/2226: Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Spain, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland and Portugal. The Commission's formulation is failing to fully transpose, which points to incompleteness rather than necessarily to the absence of any measures. The addressees had two months to respond, complete transposition and notify the Commission; the next step, absent a satisfactory response, is a reasoned opinion.
The composition of the list matters: four of the twelve — Greece, Spain, Cyprus and Portugal — are precisely the jurisdictions of new-resident special regimes. Italy is not on the list.
Late transposition changes neither the date of application nor the rule itself. What it creates is a timing asymmetry: an administration that has completed transposition begins sending and receiving on schedule, while one that has not may delay outgoing communications on its own rulings while continuing to receive those of others. For a client this means the timing of the exchange on a given document follows the national schedule of the issuing state rather than the EU date, and that the delay is temporal rather than structural — incomplete transposition does not take the document out of the perimeter, it only postpones the moment of dispatch.
What changed in the working presumptions
Planning around special regimes rested for two decades on an unspoken presumption: the confirmation obtained was an internal document in a relationship with one administration. A set of working habits followed from it. The case put to the receiving country could be built without checking it against what had been said to the country of departure. The date on which the former residence ended could be described one way in an Italian interpello and another way in correspondence with the former tax office. The existence of the confirmation could be left undisclosed, because there was nobody to disclose it to.
All three habits stopped working for the same reason: a document containing a finding on residence now lands by default with the administration against which that finding runs. A divergence between what was said to the receiving country and what was said to the country of departure has moved from a theoretical exposure to two documents sitting in one file.
Hence a change in the order of work. Reviewing a client on a special regime starts with an inventory rather than with optimisation: which advance rulings exist, what their dates and validity periods are, whether a renewal falls due shortly, and what exactly they say about residence and about the former jurisdiction. Only then does discussion of structure make sense, because a structure that relies on the ruling staying non-public ceases to exist at the first renewal.
The other side of the same shift is more useful than it first appears. A ruling that goes into the exchange also works as a defence: the country of departure receives a reasoned position of another administration on the same question, taken in advance and carrying that authority's own responsibility. A document whose content matches what the client told every side has become stronger since 2026, not weaker. What the new transparency defeats is divergence between rulings, not rulings themselves. The wider exchange architecture is covered in tax transparency, and the regimes themselves are compared in the map of special tax regimes.
Q/A
The perimeter
Does my 2022 special-regime ruling go into the exchange?
Not while it merely continues to apply. Article 8a(4) of Directive 2011/16/EU as amended by DAC8 covers rulings issued, amended or renewed after 1 January 2026, and the historic look-back in Article 8a(2) does not apply to rulings in the tax affairs of individuals. Once the document is renewed or amended it enters the perimeter in full, and the question then becomes which gateway applies: the residence gateway operates with no threshold, the amount gateway only where the ruling states a figure above EUR 1 500 000.
If the request omits the amount, does the ruling stay out of the exchange?
Only as regards the first gateway. The EUR 1 500 000 threshold is compared against an amount referred to in the ruling itself, so with no figure there is nothing to compare. The second gateway does not depend on figures at all: a ruling determining tax residence in the issuing Member State is exchanged regardless. For a special-regime confirmation that is the operative gateway, which is why omitting the amount achieves nothing.
Are there exclusions from the residence gateway?
One. The exchange of rulings concerning natural persons does not include rulings on taxation at source with regard to non-residents' income from employment, directors' fees or pensions. The exclusion removes high-volume withholding confirmations and is drafted as a derogation from the residence gateway alone — the amount gateway continues to apply to that category under the general rule.
Data and recipients
Who exactly will see my ruling?
The competent authorities of all Member States. Article 8a(1) requires the issuing state to communicate the information to every other Member State and to the Commission, and under Article 21(5) the records of the central directory are accessible to the competent authorities of all Member States. The Commission receives a reduced set: Article 8a(8) withholds the identification of the person, the summary of the ruling, the transfer pricing criteria and the identification of other affected persons, and its access to the directory is limited to collecting statistics.
Is the full text of the ruling communicated?
No. The automatic exchange carries the items listed in Article 8a(6): identification of the person, a summary of the content, the dates of issuance, amendment and renewal, the start and end of the validity period, the type of ruling, the amount where stated, the Member States likely to be concerned, the identification of other affected persons and an indication of the basis of the information. Another Member State may request the full text separately — Article 8a(10) expressly permits it.
When will the data on a ruling obtained in spring 2026 actually go out?
By 30 September 2026 at the latest. Article 8a(5)(a) requires exchange without delay and in any event no later than three months following the end of the half of the calendar year in which the ruling was issued, amended or renewed. For rulings from the second half of 2026 the deadline is 31 March 2027. A national transposition delay may shift the actual dispatch, but it does not take the document out of the perimeter.
National procedures
Is the Spanish Modelo 149 a ruling?
It is a poor fit by construction. Article 93 LIRPF addresses individuals who acquire Spanish tax residence and elect to be taxed under the non-resident rules, so residence is a precondition of the regime. The administration's responding act under Article 119(4) of the IRPF Regulation is issued within ten working days and certifies that the taxpayer has elected the regime; it contains no interpretation of a provision and decides nothing about residence. The Spanish instrument that does fit the definition is the consulta vinculante under Articles 88–89 LGT.
Why does the Portuguese informação vinculativa fall inside so clearly?
Because Portuguese law says so. Article 68(1) of the General Tax Law requires the request to be accompanied by the elements the tax and customs authority needs in order to ensure the mandatory and automatic exchange of information under administrative cooperation, with a cross-reference to Decree-Law 61/2013, Portugal's transposition of the DAC. The procedure was designed as an exchangeable ruling; DAC8 widened the range of cases in which the exchange is triggered for an individual.
Is a UK non-statutory clearance now exchanged as well?
Not under Article 8a: the United Kingdom is not a Member State and Directive 2011/16/EU does not apply to it. That does not put the document beyond the reach of a foreign administration — exchange on request and spontaneous exchange under the Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters and under bilateral treaties operate independently. The difference is that the automatic channel fires on its own, while an exchange on request presupposes that the requesting side already knows what to ask about.
What should a client holding documents from several countries do?
Treat each one separately, because their status differs and handling them uniformly is the commonest mistake. The Italian interpello is exchanged on its subject matter; the Spanish consulta and the Portuguese informação vinculativa by construction, subject to national classification; the Greek approval is an open question; the UK clearance sits outside the EU perimeter. A single confidentiality assumption covering all four has not matched any of them since 1 January 2026.