Canepa, Stefano (CEO – Aequitax)

Stefano Canepa was born in Italy on January 25, 1959. He attended classical studies at high school and graduated in electronical engineering with honors at Genoa University in 1984. He served as an officer of the Italian Army for 1.5 years.

He joined Andersen Consulting in 1985 until 1994 where he attained the position of senior manager specializing in banking organization.

He then served as Director of Organization of an Italian bank and as Director of Consulting Services in an Italian company dealing with Regulatory Reporting.

In 1998 he moved to Switzerland where he was first Head of Application Development at Banca del Gottardo Bank and then Director of Consulting Services at Best Vision SA, a banking software provider, where he led the development of the software interfaces during the rollout of the IRS QI System in Europe. He’s probably one of the last active people who worked on the original version of that system.

In 2005 he founded Aequitax SA in Lugano, Switzerland, a company specialized in recovering overwithholding which since then has been the market leader in Italy. He’s the CEO.

In 2017 Stefano created Aequitax SA Luxembourg with the objective of studying the Luxembourg indirect investment market: the company successfully pioneered the recovery of overwithholding despite the heavy delays due to COVID.

Although he is a Tax preparer since several years and probably one of the best experts in US taxation for NRAs, Stefano can not be an enrolled agent because of his lack of accounting education at school. Nevertheless, the IRS entrusted him with a CAF number.

Being Italian his native language, Stefano speaks fluent English, French, good Spanish and basic German.

He lives… in Europe.