Buoni Fruttiferi Postali Calculator

A BFP does not compound at one fixed rate. Its foglio informativo publishes a schedule of gross effective annual rates, one per completed holding year, and the rate that applies is whichever row matches how long you actually held the buono when you redeem it. On the current series, longer holds earn higher annualized rates, from 0.75% in the first four years up to 2.50% at the full 20-year maturity, so the schedule rewards patience rather than paying a flat rate throughout.

Redeeming at any point still uses the schedule's rate for the completed years you held it, so cashing out at year 7 pays year 7's rate on the whole holding period, not a blended figure. Before one full year has passed, however, the buono pays no interest at all and simply returns the capital you subscribed, per the foglio informativo's early redemption terms.

Interest is taxed at 12.5% at redemption under D.Lgs. 239/1996, the substitute tax rate that applies to BFP and to Italian government bonds. Separately, the imposta di bollo applies annually to the year-end value and is also collected at redemption, by default 0.20% a year, waived entirely when the redemption value sits at or below 5,000 EUR. Both rates are set in law and can change, so check the current figures before relying on the result.

Ordinari buoni stop earning interest after the 20-year maturity, a state called infruttiferi: the capital and accrued interest simply sit there, uninvested, until you redeem. You then have 10 years from maturity to cash the buono in; a buono not redeemed within that prescription period loses its value entirely. This calculator caps the holding period input at 20 years and does not model the prescription window.

This calculator works in whole years and uses the published rate rounded to two decimals, while the official coefficients in the foglio informativo carry more decimal places and accrue interest in bimestral, two-month steps within each year. The gap this introduces is small, well under a tenth of a percent even at 20 years for the current series, but it means the last digit of a long-horizon result can differ from Poste's own figure.

The prefilled schedule covers only the ordinari family of the current series; other BFP families, such as 3x4 or the ones dedicated to minors, carry different schedules and bonus rules the calculator does not prefill, though you can enter their rates by hand in the schedule editor. It does not compute a redemption value for a date partway through a year, it does not aggregate the stamp duty exemption across multiple buoni the way the law does for one person's total holdings, and it does not model the 10-year prescription period after the 20-year maturity, beyond noting that it exists.