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Comment by kfk | Hacker News Reader

I am from a similar town. In my town you have the mountains at walk distance and the seaside (including the Amalfi coast) at 1-2 hours. I used to go run up a mountain to another village and come back down an old 1km staircase. Housing is cheap even without subsidies, <300 euros for a flat. The problem? For me it’s taxes. In some European countries freelance income is taxed less (20% in Poland, ~15% in Bulgaria), in Italy it’s taxed as salary work (above 40%). There is a lot to unpack here, including paying significant pension contributions for a pension you will not ever benefit from, but Italy is not a friendly place for entrepreneurs and freelancers. I hope to go back to Italy one day, maybe when I charge my customer much higher rates.

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If you can keep your turnover below 65keur* you can open a "regime forfettario" type of fiscal position. This will grant you 5 years at 5% taxes (15% afterwards) on profit with minimal paperwork. In addition to that you'll have to pay about 15% of mandatory pension savings (but that's not taxes and you should get it back when retired).

*They may increase this to 100k.

Even without forfettario taxes are never 40%.

Income tax is around 20-25%. What is expensive is the pension (27.5%), but as you said those are not taxes.

You really should be able to benefit from the pension. See: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/work/retire-abroad/sta...

Taxes are generally high in Italy, but it's actually quite friendly towards freelancers. I'm in Italy and I earn about the same as my Italian friend in the UK, but I take home more than he does after tax/social security.

If you're freelance and earn <€65k then you can use the 'regime forfettario' and pay a flat 5% tax + pension contributions.

If you earn more & have lived abroad for the past few years, then you can get tax relief on 90% of your income in your southern region (less in the centre/north).

Not sure you're doing the math well. Can't be 40%.

It's normally 27.5% [1] of pension (so not taxes), plus income taxes (which hardly hit 30%).

Personally even being digital nomad most of my time and living abroad right now I still have my company in Italy, as the final saving isn't that much if you care about having a good pension in future.

[1] this may change if you're part of a profession related pension system, the value I wrote is for the default one.

I add pension and sometimes health insurance too (if it’s good like in Germany I don’t). But you have a point and I should define it as “cost of living in a country for above 180 days per year” not taxes.

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