100% agree with KJK.
I know plenty of people and also have distant relatives there. Pretty much I go to italy every summer since I was a kid and follow it closely, so I know the problems.
Nearly made the mistake of buying a villa+land from a friend a few years ago.
I still remember the first day I was stopped on the road by economic police with machine guns and bulletproof vests... was asking myself wtf I did? and they told me it's normal there, economic police with machine guns stopping people on the road lol already that gave me the idea of the situation...
It's fun as right now I'm on holidays in Italy, I must say it feels good on the countryside. Beautiful land, food, beaches, beautiful weather, always loved the Mediterranean.
If you live in the southern countryside/small towns away from the spotlight you can do whatever you want.
Italy is just a weird mix of very different regions that all hates each other.
But the economy is s**t. It always been s**t, they were always printing money, but they noticed only when the stupid left wing government decided to adopt euros.
There's too much welfarism. Too many civil servants doing nothing but printing/photocopying paper/chatting literally all day long, and yet nearly nothing in the public sector works.
Also blatant corruption. Nice to hear that the Italian President (his expenses+palaces+servants there) costs each year more than the White House...
Side note, after France, it's the perfect place where can you find plenty of Champagne socialists.
It's a bureaucratic hell that place.
For what I know nearly nobody respects the laws and rules. Especially local councils ones, as some are really stupid ways to grab some extra tax money. Yet each year something in the code change making it even more messy, and it results even more tax evasion. Their tax code must be by now a massive brain fart.
There's a crazy taxation on sport/supercars, yachts, helicopters, basically on every thing barely funny... cars over 200something hp have a massive yearly extra-tax for every hp over that even if they're worth a few thousands... a friend had to export his car collection as it was just stupid. That's on top of the already pricey road tax.
It's one of those countries that enjoys taxing money already taxed.
I had a friend showing me his tax return and once you started adding taxes he was being robbed something like 60/65% for his italian ltd... and on top of that he had to prepay taxes based on previous year, even if in that year he had no or small revenue... he was always struggling with cash flow just to pay taxes. He closed the company, fired everyone and relocated to Bulgaria
every time I heard him he still tells me "best thing I ever done in my life, should've done earlier!"
. So what next they go into peoples homes with currency sniffer dogs like at airports? How about metal detectors in peoples back gardens and pot plants?
