Back Tax?
 

Hi All,

My wife and i have the permesso di sojourno, and have had due to post Brexit and owning a house in Sicily. My wife has retired (or taking a break from work), and will live in Sicily full time. While I am still working in the staying part time in the UK. We've spend less than 183 days in Italy so far, but going forward that wont be the case for at least my wife. We've started to ask about income tax based on her pension from a tax advisor, and they are saying we should actually be paying income tax already due to our residency status. And as such may owe back taxes to the year we recieved our residency. I can understand my wife would have to file taxes once she is in Italy and make that her permanent tax residency.

My questions therefore are
- When does Italy require we file and pay income tax from the point of receiving residency under Brexit?
- Or does Italy become our tax residency only after we have lived / worked there for 183 days in a year?

Lastly, anyone have contact in Siracusa region for a internationa tax advisor?

Apologies if the question has been asked before but i could not find the answer searching.
Thanks
KR
MigsAngel

Re: Back Tax?
 

Basically, if you are resident or have a permesso di soggiorno you are assumed to be here for more than 183 days a year and therefore should be filling in a tax return, and in theory you are tax payers in Italy. More pressing is that if you dont spend the 183 days necessary in Italy you shouldnt have a permesso and you shouldnt be resident.
International tax lawyer in Siracusa - nope. Theres one in Catania who apparently knows his stuff, otherwise people tend to use Rome based advisors.

Re: Back Tax?
 

You can start filing tax returns from May every year - May 2025 for the 2024 tax year (Jan-Dec). Deadlines vary from June to October, depending on the mode (paper or digital) and the tax return form (730 or PF).

Re: Back Tax?
 

Agree with Daniel T and Modicasa.
​​​​From the Italian legal point of view obtaining residency essentially means one has decided to live in Italy and therefore one pays taxes in Italy. There are a few exceptions. For example, if your wife has a UK state pension then the tax is payable in the UK. And you simply can't be resident in two countries (under Italian law).

I don't quite know what you mean by getting a Permesso "under Brexit". Brexit didn't give British people specific rights to be resident in Italy. Brexit removed those rights because British people are no longer EU citizens. British citizens who were already resident in Italy before Brexit retained some EU derived rights and are able to get a Carta di Soggiorno as evidence of those rights, but you say you have a Permesso di Soggiorno ...if that's correct you ​should have declared all of your circumstances truthfully to the Italian consulate in order to obtain the Permesso. Are you saying that you did tell them everything but they still gave you a Permesso? Because it doesn't sound like you should have qualified for a Permesso at that time. And It doesn't sound like the Permesso you do have is actually valid because you don't spend enough time in Italy now.

As I said, your wife might not have to pay tax on her pension if it's a state pension, but if it's private she should be able to claim back any tax she paid in the UK. However Italian taxes are higher of course.

And I'm sorry...there's potentially more bad news. It's not just Income Tax that you need to worry about. Italian residents pay tax on their worldwide assets. Not just money in the bank and other investments, but also property that one owns.

On the other hand if you are not resident then you should be paying second home tax (IMU) on your Italian property.

And what's even worse is that there are really hefty fines for unpaid taxes. The Italian tax agencies don't work fast. They have up to seven years to catch up with unpaid taxes, and they generally work to that deadline...so people are just receiving bills and fines now for six years ago.

​​​​​​⠀‹It's not much comfort but at least it sounds like you have detected it early. You might still be in time to make the correct declarations and avoid some of the fines.

It's all a bit of a nightmare I'm afraid...we gave up residency recently and it was partly for similar reasons to yours...so I do sympathise. People say "Get good advice" about Italian tax and of course they are right, but how does a layperson know whether the professional advice they receive is good or not? And in the end it's not the professional who pays.

Re: Back Tax?
 

Having lived in both Italy and France I have always followed the maxim of "do it right from the beginning" because as sure as eggs are eggs wizard wheezes always come back to bite you. I know that in France some Brits with holiday homes twigged that if they hung about long enough just before Brexit they could apply for a WA card so they would not have to worry their little heads with EU bureaucracy like only staying for 90 days in 180 etc. As the system was overloaded with the genuine applicants there were very few actual checks being carried out by the French authorities meaning some people got the cards when they should not.However it is all coming back to bite them because now when they try to leave France in their UK registered vehicles they are being stung with big fines for being French "residents" and not having reregistered their cars onto French plates. Many are now being looked at for back taxes including not paying second homes tax and for possible fraud so the OP needs to get sorted and doing it voluntarily will help