Buckerfan wrote:
Straight from an Italian pilots mouth. Terrific and thank you. I will pay the Italian import VAT as soon as I arrive in Italy formally of course.
Hm. Do you actually need to pay import VAT if move your household into a new country?
Genuine question.
No, only upon import to the EU. See the VAT thread.
Italy is similar to Greece in that individually they are super friendly but corporately very “non-transparent”. The name of the game is to not upset anybody important. Tax evasion is absolutely mandatory, as I have just found out yet again in dealings with a supplier there 
arj1 wrote:
Do you actually need to pay import VAT if move your household into a new country?
Unless it has changed, no. I moved from CH to the UK, then from the UK to DE, and then back to CH. Household goods, including vehicles (at least ground ones), were not subject to tax. Then…
Italy? Worked outta MXP for 5 years, and I have learnt a few things about the place, its inhabitants, etc. But nothing I’d write on a public place like this one 
lukepower wrote:
This is the classic “italian” way of live, regrettably. Always complaining about something.
He is not Italian, he is Dutch. He came to Italy for the landscape, the sun, e.t.c. pretty much what Buckerfan is looking for. Instead he found bureaucracy, cost, taxes, harassment (some immigrant friendly folks set fire to his house some months after they bought it) and a general feeling that if you don’t “belong” you should not be there.
Not that this is a perogative of Italy, lots of folks feel the same elsewhere.
lukepower wrote:
And then we are wondering if the Guardia di Finanza is looking for ways to limit the “black” activities.
By the looks of it, the GdF can teach lessons on black activities themselves…. they were caught in Switzerland, where they have no juristiction, spying on their countrymen and others.
lukepower wrote:
So, at the end of the day, I would say that Italy is still very nice.
Good for you. As a foreigner, I’d frankly look at a lot of other places to move to first before even remotely considering Italy. Not that most others are much different, but I’d be too wary of the country where it’s considered normal that whole areas are controlled by mafiotic organisations and where it appears that this is as much a way of life used by officials as well to control their citizens.
Of course I realize that this is not only like this in Italy…
Dan wrote:
Italy? Worked outta MXP for 5 years, and I have learnt a few things about the place, its inhabitants, etc. But nothing I’d write on a public place like this one
pity. I reckon it would make interesting reading for anyone wishing to move there.
Do you actually need to pay import VAT if move your household into a new country?
In general, no. When we moved to France from the US, we (legally) didn’t pay VAT on anything, including the plane I bought with me. We had to sign a declaration that we had owned everything for at least six months and that we wouldn’t resell it within a year.
Of course things vary from country to country, but I think that is pretty widespread.
I think that the problem in that Italy case was that the aircraft were formally regisitered with a US trust, where the Italian authorities did not know that this was standard practice for US legal reasons. It is mentioned in the AOPA article I linked above.
Dan wrote:
Italy? Worked outta MXP for 5 years, and I have learnt a few things about the place, its inhabitants, etc. But nothing I’d write on a public place like this one
“- What can you say about …?”
“- Nothing! As I sit in open office!” (c) former colleague. :)
Was blessed to live and work in il bel paese for nearly ten years (LIML) and never had a problem. The euro project having started with the treaty of Rome I would expect a bit better from euroga :)
I agree. One could write most of this about any country in Europe.
All have problems, and the further south you go the worse they tend to get when it comes to social and corporate transparency. Also you tend to get less sophisticated tax systems, so naturally you get more tax evasion, and you then get more kneejerk actions to stop that (e.g. Greece collecting income tax via electricity bills!!). I have incredible stories about buying engineering plastics – a major product in Italy.
The UK has a sophisticated and well organised tax system so there is not much tax evasion (the cash economy and plenty of avoidance around the edges). But go back say 40 years (where Italy is now, corporately, probably – Berlusconi had a pretty good run ) and you could pay half your staff out of the petty cash box, as “casual labour”
That Italian police or tax authorities didn’t know about US trusts, decades after they have come into widespread use, shows the general incompetence common everywhere. You don’t get these VAT raids in the UK only because the VAT part of HMRC (HM Customs) have bigger fish to fry, and they have even more powers than the police to raid premises etc (despite both not carrying any 9mm which seems to correlate heavily with low IQ ).
But it also shows the extent to which Italian “touring” GA (which in Europe is largely N-reg, largely due to the way Europe’s gold plating has crippled the private IR) has been decimated (appropriately, a Roman term, although Romans executed only 10% whereas Europe “executed” more like 90%) so the group of “targets” is quite small whereas in say Germany or the UK it would be 10x or 100x bigger.
