Some people move to Italy in search of “la dolce vita”, like Phil and Anne Adams. The couple, from Milton Keynes, moved to the Abruzzo region in central Italy in 2018. She volunteers at the local school in the hilltop village of Palombaro, while he is kept busy tending to their 120 olive trees.
“Warmer weather and a gentler way of life made us make the move to the Abruzzo, which looks rather like Yorkshire with sun,” said Mr Adams.
But others are increasingly drawn by Italy’s very welcoming tax regime. Retirees who move to less populated areas in the southern half of the country (which includes Abruzzo) pay a low flat rate of tax. To qualify, the municipality must have fewer than 20,000 inhabitants, or 3,000 in the case of certain Umbrian villages.
While your pension or other sources of non-Italian income will be taxed at 7pc, you will still need to obtain a visa to move there if you are not an EU citizen. An “elective residency visa” is designed for self-sufficient residents with a minimum annual income requirement of around €38,000 (£32,000) per couple. Around two thirds of British nationals living in Italy are over 55 and most live in Lombardy, Lazio or Tuscany, according to the British Embassy in Rome.
But you don’t have to be retired to apply for the country’s other flat tax regime – just wealthy. Introduced in 2017, it offers an annual tax of €100,000 on whatever you earn. Amy Redfern-Woods of estate agency Knight Frank said: “Every year we’ve seen purchases for this reason increase. They are mostly families who choose where to go on the basis of international school options. Florence is especially popular, drawing buyers to within half an hour of the city, and also Siena and Lake Como.”
