Anna: Welcome back to the Magic Towns Italy podcast! I’m Anna.
Luca: Ja, det er du. Og jeg hedder Luca. Hej, Anna.
Anna: Hi. Hope everyone had a nice Easter break and you didn’t miss our podcast too much last weekend. So, today we are back with big news for anyone looking at retiring in Italy. It’s a legal change that sounds tiny on paper, but is actually quite a big deal.
Luca: Ja, det er rigtigt. Det er en klassisk italiensk historie med nogle få ord, der bliver ændret i loven, og som ender med at ændre landkortet på en meget betydningsfuld måde.
Anna: Ja, i dette tilfælde påvirker ændringen den såkaldte 7%-pensionistskatteordning , som mange af vores læsere og lyttere allerede kender til. Jeg mener, vi har skrevet masser af artikler om det.
Luca: Yeah. And we’ve done [00:01:00] so many podcasts about it. But this is possibly the biggest change in the scheme since it was launched about 10 years ago. What has changed is not the tax rate itself and not the basic logic that’s underlying the tax regime, but it’s a type of town that you can choose.
Anna: Hvilket i praksis kan betyde endnu mere.
Luca: Helt sikkert.
Anna: Okay, so let’s start with the simple version. What happened?
Luca: Den enkle version er denne.
Loven har hævet befolkningstærsklen i lovgivningen om 7%-skatteordningen fra 20.000 indbyggere til 30.000 indbyggere. Det betyder, at 7%-ordningen nu kan anvendes i en hel del flere byer end tidligere, så længe byen ligger i de regioner, der allerede var omfattet af loven. Og dette gælder fra sidste mandag, som er den 7. april 2026.
Det, der er sket, er, at udvalget af [00:02:00] støtteberettigede byer er blevet bredere, og det gør det meget interessant for folk, der prøver at vælge, hvilken by de vil flytte til.
Anna: For det er klart, at mange af de støtteberettigede steder var, jeg mener, meget små.
Luca: Lille? Ja.
Og det var den største klage, vi fik fra vores læsere og lyttere, at de kvalificerede byer ofte var smukke, charmerende og lidt billige, men mange potentielle tilflyttere kiggede på listen og tænkte: Åh, det ser godt ud, men det er alt for lille til mig.
Anna: Og hvad betyder lille? Ligesom
Luca: Well, we’ve talked a lot about demographic resilience. We did a podcast a couple weeks ago. Towns dying out. And normally smaller towns mean fewer services, fewer shops that are open year round, fewer transportation links, fewer healthcare options, and also a quite a bit of isolation more than people can take.
Anna: Okay, så reformen flytter regimet ind i et mere praktisk sweet spot.
Luca: Yeah, that’s what [00:03:00] I would say. The list of towns now includes a whole band of towns that still feel local and “Italian”, but they are more livable on an everyday basis because they are simply bigger.
Anna: So, before we get carried away. Let’s also be clear about what has not changed.
Luca: Yes, that’s important, and these are the basic rules that underlie the 7% tax regime. It does not mean that the regime now applies everywhere in Italy. While the whole of Italy included, the North has plenty of towns that will benefit from such a tax break, the geography is still limited to the territories that were originally in the law.
What does this mean? It means that qualifying municipalities in Sicily, Calabria, Sardinia, Campania, Basilicata, Abruzzo, Molise, and Puglia, plus very few earthquake [00:04:00] affected municipalities in Central Italy qualify. Outside of these regions, nothing qualifies. No matter how big or how small. The town doesn’t qualify.
Second, it is still a tax break for people that have a qualifying foreign source pension income. It doesn’t matter what kind of pension it is: private, public, state. Irrelevant. If you receive a foreign pension, you can qualify for this.
You transfer your tax residence to one of the qualifying towns in Southern Italy. And you’re good. So this is not a general expat regime. It is not for digital nomads, and it is something aimed at foreign retirees.
Anna: Vi blev virkelig overraskede, for nogle af disse byer er faktisk ret populære, vil jeg sige.
Luca: Yes, well known, and that’s the fun part of this.
Anna: Okay, so let’s talk through a few of the towns that now qualify.
Luca: Helt sikkert.
Anna: Let’s begin in Abruzzo with Francavilla al Mare.
Luca: Yes. [00:05:00] We picked this one as the first out of the 80 new qualifying towns. It is a very good example. Francavilla al Mare is the kind of town that people makes think: “Okay, well I can see me moving here”. It’s on the Adriatic coast, just south of Pescara. Så du har havet. Du har en meget flot strandpromenade. Den har denne lette strandbyrytme, men den er ikke afskåret fra den store verden.
Anna: And that is important, isn’t it?
Luca: Yes. It’s a place where 7% town doesn’t mean you are isolated in the corner of somewhere. You are close to a bigger urban area, close to an airport, Pescara Airport. And you can, I think in many cases, imagine to have a very pleasant day-to-day life in a place like this.
Anna: Den næste by er Sulmona, som allerede har en stor profil blandt udenlandske købere og expats.
Luca: It does. Sulmona is often mentioned by people moving to Abruzzo. It was quite attractive. It has a decently sized expat community. It’s an elegant city [00:06:00] with the mountains, historic, and then it has that kind of Abruzzo mix of beauty, elegance and value, and it is one of the few mountain towns in Abruzzo with a significant population.
Anna: Helt sikkert. Det føles virkelig som en rigtig by. Og hvad med Pompeji?
Luca: En af mine favoritter. Alle kender Pompeji: stor kulturel betydning, UNESCO's verdensarv, men når man tænker på, hvordan det er at bo i det moderne Pompeji, er det en anden sag.
Anna: Hvorfor?
Luca: Well, it isn’t just archeology. It is certainly a place with a global cultural cachet. Tourism has a huge impact. You’re gonna find holds of tourists at peak times, but it is also a large-ish town, around 25,000 people. It has a real infrastructure, supermarkets, there’s something going on all year. It has transport services. The ancient side of course, is one of the great historical landscapes in the world, [00:07:00] but for relocation, you’re thinking more about the modern town, and that is of course a more realistic option now that the tax regime has expanded.
Anna: So for some people, this incentive turns Pompeii from ” lovely to visit” into possibly feasible to live in.
Luca: Maybe. I’ve been to Pompeii many times, it wouldn’t be my first choice to move to, with the tourism impact, I mean, but there is a proximity to Naples, Salerno, De naturlige omgivelser er meget attraktive, så de er bestemt værd at se på.
Anna: Nu fra Campania til Puglia: Putignano!
Luca: Putignano! Putignano is a good example of another great pick that’s given to us by the tax reform because it has personality. It’s not just pretty, you know, it has a town energy. It has a famous carnival, which gives it a cultural difference from a lot of the mid-size towns in the [00:08:00] list.
Anna: Ja, det er det. Og det betyder noget, hvis man vil bo der på lang sigt. Faktisk sagde mange læsere, at de bliver trætte af manglen på liv i nogle af de nuværende 7%-byer. Så de ender med at længes efter atmosfære, energi, rytme og tekstur.
Luca: Ja, ja. Åh, tekstur. Ja, det vil jeg sige. Putignano er et godt eksempel på, at det lokale liv er stærkt. Det er bestemt ikke på turist- eller expat-radaren, men du ved, det har sin egen energi.
Anna: To finish this off, let’s go to Sicily and Noto.
Luca: Noto we kept for last because it’s the one that will make listeners ears prick up. I wrote in our article on the website that I could almost hear the cheers from home if people found out that Noto was on the list.
Noto er et af glamournavnene i denne samtale, og pensionister har længe ønsket at få det på 7%-listen. Jeg talte med folk, der var [00:09:00] skuffede over, at nogle af de mere afsidesliggende landsbyer, der er en del af Noto, ikke var kvalificerede. Det gør de nu. Byen har stor symbolsk betydning. Den er også på UNESCO's verdensarvsliste, den har en enorm barok stamtavle, og det er i denne Modica, Ragusa, general area of southeastern Sicily. And it has that kind of look, that’s iconic. The stoves, the streets, it has a very distinctive architecture. So we welcome it to the expanded list of 7% towns.
Anna: Ja, helt sikkert. Beliggenheden er fantastisk.
Luca: It is already not obscure, but it is on people’s mental shortlist for Sicily. But now it’s going to attract, I imagine far greater retention, which is important both for people that want to move there and this being almost more so for investors.
Anna: Og der er sikkert mange af vores lyttere, der besøger vores guide til expatbyen Noto.
Luca: Det håber jeg virkelig. Der er en, så gå ind på hjemmesiden og læs den.
Anna: Okay. [00:10:00] Så for at opsummere: Denne reform åbner 7%-ordningen for 80 større byer i Syditalien, hvoraf mange har både charme og brugbar infrastruktur.
Luca: That’s right. And our whole project, at Magic Towns, is about helping people think beyond the usual big cities. And at the same time, we don’t want to pretend that every tiny bit suits everyone. So this reform opens up an interesting list of middle ground towns, and I think a lot of good decisions will get made around these newly editable towns.
Anna: Det er også derfor, vi har opdateret vores materiale omkring de nye kvalificerende byer.
Luca: So we’ve already listed out all the newly added municipalities. Every one of them has a profile in the Town Explorer on Magic Towns. You can search for those towns by using the 7% tax button. And listeners, if you want to go from “that sounds interesting” to “what is daily life [00:11:00] actually like there?”, now you know where to go to find that information.
Anna: Præcis. Så denne episode er informativ, så ikke personlig skatterådgivning.
Luca: I høj grad. Juridiske ændringer er reelle, men din egen berettigelse afhænger af dine omstændigheder. Så læs op, bliv informeret, og lad være med at flytte alene på baggrund af et podcast-afsnit.
Anna: Bliv dog ved med at lytte til podcasten.
Luca: Ja, det var det, jeg ville sige. Vi er meget taknemmelige for at have et så engageret og interesseret publikum. Hvis du har ideer eller ønsker til de næste episoder, så kontakt os på Facebook, Instagram eller hjemmesiden, og mange tak, fordi du lyttede til os i denne uge.
Anna: Tak skal I have. Vi ses i næste uge!
Luca: Vi ses i næste uge! Farvel, farvel.
English
French
German
Italian
Danish