If like me, one of the few things you miss in Italy is a decent department store, in particular John Lewis, you may be interested to know that they now offer international delivery for £7-50.
Does anyone have a phone number for Telecom Italia that can be used from UK? We started trying to cancel our landline/ADSL contract with them last October - following their instructions to the letter.
After 10 years in Italy, the last 7 of which have been in Le Marche (Macerata province) for family reasons we now have to return to UK for at least a year.
As long as you have a UK address through which you can be contacted I would stick to a UK licence - it is perfectly legal to do so as long as you have one of the modern licences with photocard and EU logo. You cannot have a foreign address on a UK licence. Friends, living full time in Italy but with UK licences managed to avoid speeding points as it is not yet possible to put points on a foreign licence! Also, if you ever want to hire a car in UK, or perhaps elsewhere, we used to find that the cost was far higher if we claimed to be Italian rather than British, in some instances the hire car charge was literally double! Finally, I think you have to have a medical every so often with an Italian licence, can't remember all the details but there was another fairly recent post concerning driving licences and with each renewal and medical there were the inevitable fees involved.
Our local (Le Marche) schools Easter holidays are 5 - 10 April. I would advise your friends to check out hotels etc very carefully - two years running we had to change ski hotels, and resort, at the last minute as they decided to close before Easter despite having advertised that they would be open!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Having said that, on both occasions it was a later Easter so fingers crossed they will be ok this year.
The R'air STN-AOI-STN summer flights are now listed - 2 flights on Sat and Tues, one one every other day. NB- the Sunday flight is at a completely different time from the usual!
Thought the E10000 was an EU law and not specific to Italy. The new thing re E1000 is that all cash transactions over E1000 (used to be E2500) have to be done electronically to minimise the risk of tax evasion. "The package, the third austerity plan to be adopted in the past six months, touches on all aspects of Italian society with items aimed at shrinking the size of the government, raising theretirement age, forcing all transactions of more than 1,000 euros to be done electronically to fight tax evasion, an increase of the sales tax of two percentage points, and tax breaks for companies that hire young workers and women."
I think the threshold is currently five k and about to drop to one. Is it really that low? Seems a bit odd when you can carry up to E10,000 in cash into Italy without declaring it!
Also when I reach 65 and I want to have my pension paid into an Italian Bank, will that flag up anything at the tax office? With all the money laundering regulations it used to be the amount transferred at any one time that was flagged up on the system (was about £10000/E12000 - but may have changed) however any regular transfer may also feature, I just don't know. If you have a UK pension paid directly into an Italian bank account the exchange rate may be horribly poor - I would be inclined to continue to have the pension paid into a UK account and then transfer as and when via one of the currency companies such as Caxton, HIFX etc etc who tend to offer far better rates of exchange than the High Street Banks. They do offer a regular payment system so may be worth chatting to to see what they, the experts, suggest. They should at least be able to advise on all the current rules re international transfers and the various limits.
Bringing back ICI or IMU as it will become makes sense - to remove it seemed a bizarre decision, particularly as it was quite low anyway (especially compared to UK council tax) but enough to make a difference at local government level. To increase IVA makes no sense - it will hit people hard and 'encourage' the IVA avoidance days of old, even with the GdF tightening up on tax avoidance. There had to be a change to pensions - making people retire after 41 years of contributions made no sense especially when it applied to many who had left school at 14! Neighbours retired at 55!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Still fit and fully able to work but not worth it financially as they would not have been able to increase their overall pension! So all they did was work in the black and pay no taxes what so ever. Austerity measures have to happen but I just hope that those introduced do not hit the pensioners and less well off the hardest - wishfull thinking I fear.
Comments posted
This previous post may be useful - http://www.italymag.co.uk/community/post/pay-you-go-interent We used the TIM deal mentioned over the summer without any issues.
As long as you have a UK address through which you can be contacted I would stick to a UK licence - it is perfectly legal to do so as long as you have one of the modern licences with photocard and EU logo. You cannot have a foreign address on a UK licence. Friends, living full time in Italy but with UK licences managed to avoid speeding points as it is not yet possible to put points on a foreign licence! Also, if you ever want to hire a car in UK, or perhaps elsewhere, we used to find that the cost was far higher if we claimed to be Italian rather than British, in some instances the hire car charge was literally double! Finally, I think you have to have a medical every so often with an Italian licence, can't remember all the details but there was another fairly recent post concerning driving licences and with each renewal and medical there were the inevitable fees involved.
Our local (Le Marche) schools Easter holidays are 5 - 10 April. I would advise your friends to check out hotels etc very carefully - two years running we had to change ski hotels, and resort, at the last minute as they decided to close before Easter despite having advertised that they would be open!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Having said that, on both occasions it was a later Easter so fingers crossed they will be ok this year.
The R'air STN-AOI-STN summer flights are now listed - 2 flights on Sat and Tues, one one every other day. NB- the Sunday flight is at a completely different time from the usual!
159!!!!!!!!!!!!!! fill up quickly! In our area of Le Marche it went up from 161 to 171 overnight!
Thought the E10000 was an EU law and not specific to Italy. The new thing re E1000 is that all cash transactions over E1000 (used to be E2500) have to be done electronically to minimise the risk of tax evasion. "The package, the third austerity plan to be adopted in the past six months, touches on all aspects of Italian society with items aimed at shrinking the size of the government, raising theretirement age, forcing all transactions of more than 1,000 euros to be done electronically to fight tax evasion, an increase of the sales tax of two percentage points, and tax breaks for companies that hire young workers and women."
I think the threshold is currently five k and about to drop to one. Is it really that low? Seems a bit odd when you can carry up to E10,000 in cash into Italy without declaring it!
Also when I reach 65 and I want to have my pension paid into an Italian Bank, will that flag up anything at the tax office? With all the money laundering regulations it used to be the amount transferred at any one time that was flagged up on the system (was about £10000/E12000 - but may have changed) however any regular transfer may also feature, I just don't know. If you have a UK pension paid directly into an Italian bank account the exchange rate may be horribly poor - I would be inclined to continue to have the pension paid into a UK account and then transfer as and when via one of the currency companies such as Caxton, HIFX etc etc who tend to offer far better rates of exchange than the High Street Banks. They do offer a regular payment system so may be worth chatting to to see what they, the experts, suggest. They should at least be able to advise on all the current rules re international transfers and the various limits.
Bringing back ICI or IMU as it will become makes sense - to remove it seemed a bizarre decision, particularly as it was quite low anyway (especially compared to UK council tax) but enough to make a difference at local government level. To increase IVA makes no sense - it will hit people hard and 'encourage' the IVA avoidance days of old, even with the GdF tightening up on tax avoidance. There had to be a change to pensions - making people retire after 41 years of contributions made no sense especially when it applied to many who had left school at 14! Neighbours retired at 55!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Still fit and fully able to work but not worth it financially as they would not have been able to increase their overall pension! So all they did was work in the black and pay no taxes what so ever. Austerity measures have to happen but I just hope that those introduced do not hit the pensioners and less well off the hardest - wishfull thinking I fear.
Thanks Ram.