Retail Investments in Europe Wealth Allocation and ISA, ISK, PEA, PIR Role and Usage

This report examines household wealth composition and the design of tax-advantaged retail investment accounts in four European economies over the period 1998 to 2024. Drawing on national balance sheet data from Istat, the Office for National Statistics, INSEE and Statistics Sweden, the first part documents the allocation of household wealth between financial and nonfinancial assets, the composition of financial portfolios, and equity market participation in Italy, the United Kingdom, France and Sweden. The second part compares four retail investment instruments, namely the Italian PIR, the French PEA and PEA-PME, the Swedish ISK and the United Kingdom ISA, along the dimensions of tax treatment, contribution limits, eligible assets, holding period requirements, distribution channels and market performance. The evidence indicates that fiscal generosity is a weak predictor of household adoption. The most generously taxed instrument in the sample, the Italian PIR, records the lowest penetration at 1.5 percent of adults and 0.5 percent of household financial wealth, whereas the Swedish ISK, whose flat annual levy on portfolio value is conceptually less favourable, reaches 52.3 percent penetration and 7.8 percent of financial wealth. Adoption correlates instead with the absence of holding period requirements, breadth of the eligible investment universe, simplicity of tax computation and stability of the regime over time. The report concludes by proposing an Italian adaptation of the Swedish model, the Conto di Investimento a Tassazione Forfettaria, which replaces realisation-based capital gains taxation with an annual presumptive levy on portfolio value calculated as the European Central Bank reference rate plus one percentage point, multiplied by 30 percent.