Best to avoid flying "GA" to Italy

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peter-h

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peter-h
This is the worst current example of the crazy stuff which is happening here in Europe.

After 48hrs on Italian soil, you get hit with a bill of several thousand $.

No excuse. Aircraft could be AOG, cannot depart due to bad wx, doesn't matter.

Nobody I know flies to Italy now and avoiding its airspace is a must also in case you divert there.

Nobody quite believed they would be so stupid so as to do this, but they have done it...
 
4th post says this was a proposal and never passed? Is this typical internet bull**** feeding?
 
No; read the rest. It is now real. At first nobody believed it.
 
A proposed "Luxury Tax" on aircraft to tax those "rich" people? Hmmmm, sounds pretty familiar.
 
Sardinia tried this a few years ago (boats and planes) and the visitors almost dried up. They then dropped it.

What Italy has now done is at least 10x bigger in the size of the payments.

The worst part is that you can get trapped into paying it, if you cannot fly out. You may well choose to drop in for just a day but if you have a problem, they will hit you with the 4-figure bill.
 
Well the "Luxury Tax" killed the U.S. boat manufacturing business, and now they want to do something similar to GA by calling it something else.
 
Italy just added a mooring tax of some sort for boats. Going to be a lonely place.
 
'Luxury tax' and the ways to avoid it are a long-standing staple of italian tax law. This used to include cars with more than 2.0l displacement. Wealthy italians used to have a second home (or mailbox) in southern germany to have an address to register all their toys to. And then there were 1.99liter turbocharged versions of vehicles built only for the italian market. Also, commercial vehicles were not subject to the tax so you would ocasionally see sports-cars with metal windows in the back and the label of some made-up courier company on them.

Italian goverments since WW2 have lasted 9 months on average. Chances are this nonsense is going to disappear like many other ideas with the next cabinet reshuffling.
 
i've heard that several european glider pilots have cancelled their soaring vacations in Rieti because of this. I'd find somewhere else to visit as well.
 
I'll wait for Mussolini to come back.

:D
 
I guess it's hard for politicians to understand that taxing something discourages it.
 
Jack Spectre said:
I guess it's hard for politicians to understand that taxing something discourages it.
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When it comes to GA, and fuel usage in general, etc that is EXACTLY why they do it. Less planes in the system, less greenhouse gases emitted due to less fuel consumption.
 
Bureaucratism based governments are all desperate for money now that most of them have reached their bureaucratic maturity. In other words their number of employees along with the decades of raises and benefits, that include huge numbers of retirees who's pensions must be paid, have grown to the point where no possible revenue source can be ignored.

Creative financing now takes the bulk of their time over whatever mission they were originally formed to accomplish.

We can expect to see many more of these revenue producing "experiments" in the coming years.

John
 
Jack Spectre said:
I guess it's hard for politicians to understand that taxing something discourages it.
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No it's not. They use that to put disincentives on all sorts of things from smoking to alcohol regularly. They're quite aware of the effects. Which makes it all the worse when they do things like this!
 
gprellwitz said:
No it's not. They use that to put disincentives on all sorts of things from smoking to alcohol regularly. They're quite aware of the effects. Which makes it all the worse when they do things like this!
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California has a huge problem on their hands, too may people have given up smoking. California had imposed major taxes on tobacco to discourage its use, then used the money to fund countless programs, that are now on the brink of collapse due to lack of funds. They took it much further than using the money, they borrowed against projected tobacco revenue as well, and are now unable to meet their loan payments.

I wonder what will come next? Probably an advertising campaign touting the benefits of smoking.

John
 
I think Italy is doing this as a straight attempt to raise money from what they perceive are tax evaders.

The news here is full of anecdotes about e.g. the tax people "visiting" some event where there were 100 Ferraris, and nobody present was declaring more than 10k in income - or some [insert your own figures] variation of that. Same with luxury boats. And I am sure it is true. In Italy, and even more so in Greece, more or less the only people who pay anywhere near all taxes due are ones working for big companies who thus cannot avoid paying income tax. Most people involved in say tourist trade, and most self employed (doctors, etc) run in an essentially cash world.

And with the economic storm going on here, everybody who can get Euro cash is stuffing it under a matress, or into Swiss banks, while they can, because of their country dumps the Euro and prints Liras, Pesetas or Drachmas, the Euro bills will be the only currency worth having. So things are getting worse for tax collection, not better. The difference, apparently, is that Greece is not so stupid so as to kill upmarket tourism (I flew there last Sept and had no issues beyond the usual) whereas Italy has proved to be more stupid than absolutely anybody would have believed.

I know Italian (or of Italian descent) pilots, living ouside Italy, who have been staunch supporters of Italy and the Italian way of doing things (OK if you live there, speak Italian, and have the right contacts ;) ) and none of them will even fly into its airspace now. The cost of a screwup is way too high now.

There are well documented stories of somebody landing at say Luxor (Egypt) and getting fleeced of US$2000 before they would sell him fuel. One kind of expects this in Africa, and ferry pilots who go there tend to carry copious amounts of US$ cash, but nobody expected Italy to do extortion on such a scale.

What Greece did with private aircraft is quite cunning. A particular type, say a TB20, is assigned an "income equivalent" of say 150k euros. If you are declaring that income, you pay nothing extra. If you are declaring income of say 70k euros, then you get taxed (at some rate) on the 80k shortfall. Workarounds include forming a syndicate of multiple owners, or registering the aircraft in another country (with Bulgaria, or the USA, being popular, but they have their drawbacks).
 
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John Baker said:
California has a huge problem on their hands, too may people have given up smoking. California had imposed major taxes on tobacco to discourage its use, then used the money to fund countless programs, that are now on the brink of collapse due to lack of funds. They took it much further than using the money, they borrowed against projected tobacco revenue as well, and are now unable to meet their loan payments.
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California's stupidity is truly stunning.
 
Would it be possible to confine the California-bashing to the Spin Zone?
 
I love California. Bash all you want, you don't have to visit us here either. I'll keep all the beautiful scenery thanks.
 
Not that we want any more of y'all here, but I haven't yet met a Californian who wanted to go back after they moved here.

We have scenery AND our State government isn't handing out IOUs. ;)
 
But the scuba diving and abalone diving and sailing and deep sea fishing in CO is kinda lame.....:rolleyes:

Summer is kinda short.....
 
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Goofy said:
But the scuba diving and abalone diving and sailing and deep sea fishing in CO is kinda lame.....:rolleyes:

Summer is kinda short.....
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Summer is short? Compared to what?

California is a wonderful place and being such a LARGE state, it has just about anything you want, but the people have really made it challenging for some of us to want to live there. Colorado offers much of the natural beauty and outdoor opportunities, sans ocean, without the cost, hassle, nutty regulations, over the top gun control, etc. I lived in both states, and will move back to CO at some point. I can't see myself ever living in CA again.
 
The young lady who worked for me for twelve years, and who I sold my business to, was from the Denver area, her parents still live there. She has no big desire to go back, although she says she misses Colorado. At least once a day, someone from Colorado stops in the store, lot of people from Colorado live in San Diego.

San Diego is a wonderful place to live if you don't mind the expense and the corrupt good ol boy form of government.

My grandkids live in Colorado Springs, they love Colorado.

John
 
denverpilot said:
Not that we want any more of y'all here, but I haven't yet met a Californian who wanted to go back after they moved here.
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I'm not really a Californian, I'm a New Jersean who has lived in California and visits frequently. I would go back and probably will one of these days.
 
denverpilot said:
Not that we want any more of y'all here, but I haven't yet met a Californian who wanted to go back after they moved here.

We have scenery AND our State government isn't handing out IOUs. ;)
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I do like the western half of Colorado!
 
I'm a 4th generation native Californian who escaped 17 years ago and is not moving back. Visit? You bet. Re-establish residency? Not a chance.

Now, back to Italy bashing...
 
John Baker said:
California has a huge problem on their hands, too may people have given up smoking. California had imposed major taxes on tobacco to discourage its use, then used the money to fund countless programs, that are now on the brink of collapse due to lack of funds. They took it much further than using the money, they borrowed against projected tobacco revenue as well, and are now unable to meet their loan payments.

I wonder what will come next? Probably an advertising campaign touting the benefits of smoking.

John
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John,

I had never thought about the problem of tax revenue declines from reduced tobacco use. I sure would like to read more about that if you can post some links. I did some searches and I find many links to reduced costs to government by reduction in tobacco use because of reductions in related health and other issues but I can see that if California, or any other state, has basically bet on the failure of tobacco control efforts by planning on the revenue from such failures I'd like to read about it. This is an interesting angle.
 
Gmaper said:
John,

I had never thought about the problem of tax revenue declines from reduced tobacco use. I sure would like to read more about that if you can post some links. I did some searches and I find many links to reduced costs to government by reduction in tobacco use because of reductions in related health and other issues but I can see that if California, or any other state, has basically bet on the failure of tobacco control efforts by planning on the revenue from such failures I'd like to read about it. This is an interesting angle.
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I got that from a blurb on the evening news a week or so ago. Apparently the tax funding from tobacco sales was seen as a guaranteed revenue source, so they borrowed against projected revenue, which didn't materialize, or some such thing. I think it was the local news on channel 10 or 8

John
 
Ghery said:
I'm a 4th generation native Californian who escaped 17 years ago and is not moving back. Visit? You bet. Re-establish residency? Not a chance.

Now, back to Italy bashing...
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I do sometimes get homesick for Washington State.
 
Palmpilot said:
I do sometimes get homesick for Washington State.
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God's Country. While a native of California, we moved to Pullman in 1961 and I grew up there. Took us 20 years to get back up here after graduating from WSU. Not leaving.
 
John Baker said:
California has a huge problem on their hands, too may people have given up smoking. California had imposed major taxes on tobacco to discourage its use, then used the money to fund countless programs, that are now on the brink of collapse due to lack of funds. They took it much further than using the money, they borrowed against projected tobacco revenue as well, and are now unable to meet their loan payments.

I wonder what will come next? Probably an advertising campaign touting the benefits of smoking.

John
Click to expand...

Gmaper said:
John,

I had never thought about the problem of tax revenue declines from reduced tobacco use. I sure would like to read more about that if you can post some links. I did some searches and I find many links to reduced costs to government by reduction in tobacco use because of reductions in related health and other issues but I can see that if California, or any other state, has basically bet on the failure of tobacco control efforts by planning on the revenue from such failures I'd like to read about it. This is an interesting angle.
Click to expand...

John Baker said:
I got that from a blurb on the evening news a week or so ago. Apparently the tax funding from tobacco sales was seen as a guaranteed revenue source, so they borrowed against projected revenue, which didn't materialize, or some such thing. I think it was the local news on channel 10 or 8

John
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Thanks for the reply, John. I did find a story that was done by channel 7 in SF that might have been reported on by your local station. Apparently the state and some local governments decided to spend money that is supposed to come in over the next 25 years. Here is a quote from the article that is linked down below.

"A little more than a decade ago, 46 state attorneys general reached a settlement with the four biggest tobacco companies. The companies agreed to pay an estimated $246 billion over a 25-year period to compensate states for tobacco-related health care costs. But there is one quirk: The settlement payments are not fixed, but linked to tobacco sales.

Rather than waiting for annual payments, the state and some local governments decided to borrow money against their anticipated future revenue. All told, they've issued $16 billion in bonds since 2001."

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/state&id=8551044

Sounds like typical government actions. :(
 
Never planned on going to Europe anyway. Don't care.
 
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