How is it made

Frequent mistakes include reversing the order of surname and given name, omitting middle names, misreading the birth date or using the wrong day‑code for females. Such errors result in a code that does not match the passport. It is important to verify each spelling exactly as on your passport.

No. The code uses only consonants and vowels from your surname and first name according to a fixed algorithm and does not include middle names. Names containing fewer than three consonants are padded with vowels or “X.” Therefore, two people with the same surname, given name, sex, birth date and place of birth will have identical codes.

For births outside Italy, the place‑of‑birth section contains a four‑character country code beginning with “Z”. The list of country codes is maintained by the Revenue Agency. A person born in New York, for example, would have a code with “Z404.”

Yes. For men, the day of birth appears as two digits (01–31). For women, 40 is added to the day (e.g., a woman born on the 15th will have “55” as the day code). This addition is part of the birth‑date section of the code.

The Codice Fiscale identifies individuals (including foreign citizens) and some entities, whereas the partita IVA is an 11‑digit VAT number assigned to businesses and self‑employed people. The VAT number starts with a 7‑digit taxpayer identifier followed by a 3‑digit office code and a final check digit.

The sixteenth character (a letter) is calculated using a checksum algorithm based on the previous 15 characters. It helps detect errors and ensures that the code is valid.

The first 6 characters come from the surname and given names (three consonants from the family name and three from the first name; vowels are used if there are not enough consonants, and “X” fills any empty slots). The next two digits are the last two digits of the birth year. The ninth character is a letter representing the birth month (A = January, B = February, C = March, D = April, E = May, H = June, L = July, M = August, P = September, R = October, S = November, T = December). The following two digits denote the birth day; for women 40 is added to the day (e.g., 01 becomes 41). Characters 12–15 are the municipality code (for births in Italy) or a code starting with “Z” for foreign countries. The last character is a control letter calculated via an algorithm.

For individuals, the code consists of 16 alphanumeric characters. Businesses and self‑employed persons have a separate VAT number (partita IVA) consisting of 11 digits.