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MOVING TO ITALY

Moving to Italy: Italy’s flat tax for pensioners and can you work with an elective residency visa?

Moving to Italy, a country infamous for its red tape, can seem like a daunting task. Our new newsletter is here to answer your questions - this time we're looking at how many people benefit from Italy's flat tax for pensioners and whether you can work on Italy's elective residency visa.

Published: 23 May 2024 09:51 CEST

Moving to Italy: Italy's flat tax for pensioners and can you work with an elective residency visa?

How many people take advantage of Italy's flat tax for foreign pensioners? (Photo by MARCO BERTORELLO / AFP)

Here at The Local we’re an international team living in Italy – which means we’ve either grown up navigating Italian bureaucracy or been through the simultaneously exciting and nerve-wracking process of moving countries.

Our new newsletter is aimed at people who are in the process of moving, have recently moved and are still grappling with the paperwork or perhaps are just thinking about it – and we’ll share a regular selection of practical tips. Our team is also available to answer questions from subscribers to The Local.

Who benefits from Italy’s flat tax rate for pensioners?

Since 2019, Italy has offered a special tax rate of just seven percent for people who retire in certain parts of the country on a foreign pension.

You might assume that the vast majority of Italy’s foreign retirees, of whom there are many, would jump at this offer – but the strict entry requirements mean that many pensioners don’t meet the government’s criteria.

To be eligible, retirees must live in a town of fewer than 20,000 inhabitants in one of eight southern regions, have a foreign-sourced pension, and have lived outside Italy for the previous five years.

It’s perhaps unsurprising, then, that the latest data from Italy’s Department of Finance reveals that fewer than 500 people are taking advantage of the seven-percent tax rate, with just 474 people declaring a foreign pension under the scheme on their 2023 tax returns.

If you’re interested in benefitting from the flat tax rate, you can learn more about the requirements here.

Does Italy’s elective residency visa allow you to work?

Italy’s elective residency visa (ERV) is the smoothest path to Italian residency for many non-EU nationals without close family ties to Italy, Italian ancestry or a job offer.

At a minimum income requirement of €31,000 per person per year or €38,000 for married couples, it doesn’t require vast reserves of wealth, and there are few other strict barriers to entry.

Unfortunately for those of working age, one of those barriers is that you can’t work once you arrive in Italy on the ERV. The government is clear that all your income must be passive – and if you do get caught working while on the visa, you risk being kicked out of the country.

That means it’s mostly retirees over 60 who end up benefitting from the scheme. You can learn about the best ways to set yourself up for a successful ERV application here.

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Six hard facts Americans should be aware of before moving to Italy

From the food to the climate, there’s a long list of quality-of-life positives that come with a move to Italy that could make you happier than you are in the US.

But before you start considering a permanent or long-term move to the country of your dreams, you should first think of the practicalities and potential downsides of such a big life change.

Here are six practical points Americans should factor in before embarking on a move to Italy, from work to taxes and healthcare.

Finding work or building a career isn’t easy

You’ll no doubt already know that Italy is renowned for its high unemployment rate, unstable work market and relatively low wages, but as a non-EU national there is an added set of obstacles to consider.

Firstly, applying for residency through a contract job is near impossible. Italian employers would have to first demonstrate that they have been unable to find a suitable EU candidate for the position before being able to sponsor/hire you.

Italy does release an annual quota of work visas through its decreto flussi , or ‘flows decree’, but these are massively oversubscribed, and almost entirely allocated to jobs in the agricultural, care, and seasonal hospitality sectors.

Highly-skilled workers with a job offer from an Italian employer may be eligible for the EU Blue Card, which isn’t subject to decreto flussi quotas.

Italy also recently approved a digital nomad visa which has relatively low entry requirements on paper, though it’s still unclear at this stage how easy it will be to access the visa in practice, as Italian consulates can – and do – set their own rules.

Italy’s new digital nomad visa might be an option for some hoping to move to the country. (Photo by Claudio CRUZ / AFP).

You need strong finances to ‘buy’ Italian residency

If you’re retired or don’t plan to work in Italy, then you’ll need to show you have the financial means to cover your costs.

This can best be done through Italy’s elective residency visa (ERV), which allows you to live in Italy without working.

The government’s official minimum passive income threshold for the ERV is €31,000 per person or €38,000 per married couple per year, plus five percent per dependent minor.

However, some individual consulates are known to raise the limit much higher than this – in certain cases, by as much as three or four times the minimum threshold.

Alternatively, you can purchase an Italian investor or ‘golden’ visa, but you’ll need to make a minimum investment of €250,000 in an Italian start up, €500,000 in an Italian limited company, €1 million in a philanthropic initiative, or €2 million in government bonds.

So in all, applying for Italian residency as a US citizen who can’t or doesn’t want to work in Italy involves having a lot of money saved up.

Public healthcare is the standard in Italy, but access to it as an American is subject to conditions

As you hail from a country that notoriously lacks universal healthcare, you may have assumed that here in Italy, where the approach is starkly different, anyone can walk into a public hospital and receive treatment.

That’s true if you have to go to the emergency room, or pronto soccorso – but if you otherwise want to access Italy’s public health system (Servizio Sanitario Nazionale, or SSN), things are a bit more complicated.

Some categories of non-EU resident – including employees of Italian companies, the self-employed, and those on family permits, among other groups – are eligible for ‘mandatory’ registration or registration-by-right (iscrizione obbligatoria).

Others, such as pensioners on elective residence visas, diplomatic staff of foreign governments, employees of international organisations, and volunteer workers, among others, can opt in to the SSN through iscrizione volontaria, or voluntary registration.

Italy’s government raised the minimum annual charge for voluntary registration significantly at the start of this year, from around €387 to €2,000.

Milan’s San Raffaele Hospital. (Photo by Piero CRUCIATTI / AFP)

Even if you have registration-by-right, you’ll still need to make a co-payment for some services upfront, and then claim the costs back in your tax return.

It’s worth noting that many Italian visas, including the elective residency visa and the digital nomad visa, require you to take out comprehensive private health insurance in order for your application to be approved – something that can be difficult and costly if you have pre-existing conditions.

You’ll have to resit your driving exam

Like the US, Italy is for the most part a nation of drivers, where chances are you’ll need your own vehicle to get around. If you live in a town or city you may also be able to use public transport, but this isn’t always a reliable option.

If you plan to buy a car and continue driving in Italy, it’s important to know that Italy and the United States have no reciprocal licence exchange agreement or recognition scheme.

That means that after 12 months of residency, you will need to resit your driving exam again in Italy and get an Italian driving licence (for the first 12 months, you’ll need an international driving permit in order to drive on your US licence).

It’s frustrating to think that you will have to cough up a considerable amount of money for something that you already know how to do, but on the plus side you’ll get to understand Italian roads and driving, and possibly learn how to use a stick (gearbox) as almost all cars in Italy are manual.

You have to pay taxes in Italy even if you’re not working here

As an Italian resident (someone who spends more than 183 days in a calendar year in Italy), you have to pay taxes here on your worldwide income, that is income generated anywhere in the world.

Under Italian law, tax residents are required to declare bank accounts, including joint accounts, held abroad by completing the foreign earnings and finances section of their yearly tax return form.

The only exception is for bank accounts whose balance never exceeded €15,000 at any point during the relevant tax year, and whose average balance for the year was below €5,000.

As a US citizen living abroad, you’ll also have to file a US tax return every year, even if you fall below the income threshold for paying US taxes.

Fortunately, there is a treaty in place between Italy and the US which helps determine which country to pay taxes to and the tax deadlines.

Tax office, Italy

An employee goes through paper files in a tax office in Rome in November 2017. Photo by ANDREAS SOLARO / AFP

You have to commit to living in Italy

Keep in mind that when you obtain Italian residency, it won’t necessarily entitle you to enter and leave the country for the rest of your life, especially if you spend extended periods of time outside of Italy. Permits have to be renewed and their conditions respected.

If you have a residency permit of less than two years and are a non-EU citizen, you can leave the country for six months continuously without declaring it, or for a continuous period of no more than half the duration of your permit if your permit is for two years or more.

Breaking this rule means the government could refuse to renew or extend your stay permit.

One notable exception is Italy’s investor visa, which doesn’t require the holder to become an Italian resident for the first two years (after that, you’ll need to decide whether you want to renew and become a resident, at which point you’ll be subject to the same rules as everyone else).

None of this means that you can’t spend several months at a time back home in the States – in fact extenuating circumstances such as caring for a sick family member, work or study allow for a bit more time outside Italy – just keep in mind that you have keep tabs on long absences outside of Italy as a non-EU citizen.

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