Italian taxi drivers' incomes: modest growth and territorial disparities in 2024
Fiscal analysis shows moderate increases in average earnings, with significant variations between North and South and a still rigid licence market
They don't move except for a few hundred euros: calculator in hand about 88 euros per month increase in a year. The incomes of the taxis photographed by the Finance Department of the Ministry of the Economy on the basis of the latest declarations, are equal to themselves in a long series of numbers that year after year, from 2017 to 2024, the latest available data, confirm one thing: driving a taxi in the city guarantees small earnings. And to be precise, on a sample of seven Italian provinces, from North to South, an average of 18,983.09 euros gross per year, equal to about 1,582 euros gross per month.
Fiscal data
The premise is that a new Ateco 2025 classification of activities has been used in this new version of the Mef census. Until the tax year 2023, the income of taxi drivers was photographed through the Ateco code 49.32.10 ('taxi transport'), while from 2024 the tax census passes through the new code 49.33.10 introduced by the ISTAT classification revision. Inside are all the forms under which the activity can be exercised: natural persons, partnerships, cooperatives, corporations and flat-rate companies. With one caveat: those for 2024 are still provisional numbers, because the declarations of corporations and non-commercial entities are not definitive and are updated to March 2026, while the numbers for 2023 are consolidated.
The income map
Income geography tells of an Italia that for white cars shifts earnings very little over the years, with the negative exceptions of 2020 and 2021, Covid's black years. In Florence people declare an average of 25,606 euro gross per year, or 2,133 euro per month, up from 24,244 euro in 2023. Milan follows at €23,741 (€1,978 per month), about €1,170 more than the previous year, while Bologna rises to €19,399 from €18,923 in 2023. Rome stops at EUR 16,983, about EUR 1,415 per month, up EUR 1,228 year-on-year. Turin goes from 13,349 to 14,577 euro.
The picture in the Mezzogiorno is more lively. Palermo has grown significantly, from 10,730 to 12,900 euro a year, while Naples is the only one among the big cities to register a setback: from 12,830 euro in 2023 to 11,236 in 2024, i.e. less than a thousand euro a month. On a national average, the category earned 1,060 euro more per year, 88 euro per month, or +5.9% in 12 months.
Market Access
The political point is that the taxi issue continues to suffer from a long season of paradoxes: on the one hand, there is a demand for mobility that in the big cities, having archived the pandemic, and despite the days of low work in the low season, has begun to run again along with tourism, major events and airport flows that have multiplied out of all proportion over the years. On the other hand, tax returns continue to tell of average incomes that are anything but generous. Little has changed from previous years. Also in 2024 The Sole 24 Ore had recounted an essentially stationary tax situation, with average earnings for 2022 just over 15 thousand euro per year and a trend that seemed to replicate itself almost identically year after year. The 2023 tax year marks a further recovery, but without any great leaps: 2,537 euro more in average annual income does not affect this much when spread over twelve months.
