Moving from NY to Rome, Italy

https://consnewyork.esteri.it/consolato_newyork/en/i_servizi/per_chi_si_reca_in_italia/lavoroautonomo.html

Never too soon to start the application process

send Karen ( Verbania , Italy ) a note , She is an American ex - pat , and probably well equipped to answer your questions - Karen (Verbania, Italy on Lago Maggiore (formerly Monterey County, CA)) https://community.ricksteves.com/users/36682

If you rely on working from home, you are not, from my understanding, eligible for an elective residency visa. You must promise you will not work and have sufficient resources without working to live in Italy. If you work, even from home and virtually, I understand you need a work permit.

FWIW we lived in Italy for 18 months having an ER visa and the required Permesso. I wrote about our experience on my blog if you care to read. Do check current requirements on the consulate or embassy website as they may have changed.

Working from home for a foreign employer is a relatively new grey area on many immigration regulations. Your work would be governed by US laws or those of whatever country your employer HQ is at, and you would just reside elsewhere.

There are important and tricky taxation implications, you must declare your earnings in Italy, pay tax there, and then use double-taxation provisions of the IRS to avoid being taxed again in the US. This is easier (as of mid-2018) if you stay in the US less than 30 days (including arrival and departure days) per year, then you don't (or didn't) have to make proportional appropriations and the like.

Ditto what Laurel said. Elective Residency is for people who are financially self sufficient (typically people who are retired do the ER) and you need to prove that to your consulate with documentation. Acceptable figures vary by consulate. You cannot work on an ER. If this is not your situation, check out the other visas available on the NY consulate's website. Self employment visas are rare and granted to owners of companies that will bring a lot of $ into Italy. Unfortunately, getting a visa is not easy.

Thank you all so much! This is so helpful.. i have friends/family there ..would i possibly be able to get this visa and work? I am on the younger side so definitely do not want to give up my Us retirement/401k!

I am not aware of any way to get a visa by having friends and family in Italy. Do you mean citizenship thru descent? If you can trace your lineage thru Italian parents/ancestors, you may be eligible for citizenship by blood (jure sanguinis) https://consnewyork.esteri.it/consolato_newyork/en/i_servizi/per-i-cittadini/cittadinanza/iure.html

It’s a lot of paperwork and you have to retrace your family history thru official documents from US and Italy. It’s tricky bc they cannot have renounced their Italian citizenship either. Another downside is it takes a long time. A friend of mine has her court case in Italy next year after a 3 year wait. Google it for more info. Good luck

Don't forget health insurance.

I do think you need to work out the Remote or Work from Home issues first. Typically, if you were to be there less than 90 days, or less than 180 in a year, then working for a US firm, being paid in the US, is really not an issue.

However, if you establish residency in Italy, then you have Tax Obligations, work is work then, you may need a work visa, which changes the process. Regardless, they will want to see sources of financial support, Health Insurance, Living arrangements (Apartment rental, family home, etc) and other odds and ends.

As someone mentioned, the Embassy may be the best place to start.

I recently received my elective residence visa for Italy. Alas, not soon enough to get over there before the lockdown, but we'll get there eventually. The above comments are very true, you cannot do any sort of paying work in Italy, in public or at home, with that type of visa. You also have to prove you have enough regular income (Social Security, annuity, regular pension payments, etc.) to support yourself without working in order to get a visa. Just having money in the bank is not enough, you have to be receiving regular passive income. That was made more than clear to me. Once I took the whole binder of requested documents to the visa interview, they followed up with quite specific questions and asked for my tax returns too. It's very unlikely (and illegal) that you would be able to slide anything past them. The consular officials have seen it all.

So, look harder at the other visa options to see if any of those might work for you, or limit your trips to Italy to 90 days out of every 180 (so two almost-but-not-quite 3-month non-consecutive periods in a year.)

This was driven home to us when our adult daughter, who also owns an apartment in our Italian house, was not eligible for a longer-term visa. She can get a one-time, one-year youth work visa (under 35 years, not sure if Americans are eligible) or a student visa if she enrols for a graduate degree, but has no right to stay longer than that, homeowner or not.

My unsupported opinion is that visas will become even harder to get after this pandemic, and working in any form will be even more tightly controlled. Not to be a black cloud...but doing this in any way but aboveboard and legal would just cause huge problems for you. (I'm not suggesting at all that you intend to do anything under the table, sorry if I left that impression.)

There are FB groups I'm in that have been very informative. Living in Italy is one, though it's managed by a real-estate company. It's still interesting. I'm in several groups about living in Abruzzo or Molise, which wouldn't really apply to you for Rome. InterNations is an expat membership group based out of Rome. They do lots of events in normal times and have good professional connections for real estate, movers, insurance, accountants etc. That's a start. PM me if you'd like more of my links.

"So, look harder at the other visa options to see if any of those might work for you, or limit your trips to Italy to 90 days out of every 180 (so two almost-but-not-quite non-consecutive 3-month periods in a year.)"

I'm not sure exactly what Nelly is suggesting there, but without a long-stay visa, one cannot spend two nearly-consecutive 90-day periods in Italy. It is not sufficient to leave the Schengen Zone for a few days, etc. The limit is 90 days within any rolling 180-day period, so once you've spent 90 days in Italy, you must leave the Schengen Zone for 90 full days. Remember that both arrival day in and departure day from the Schengen Zone count against the 90-day allowance; if you depart on Day 90, you cannot return until Day 181.

Thank you to all for your input. I am in thr very beginning stages of planning so all of this advice is helpful. I actually just spent 89 days in Italy and returned on March 24, (can not go back until June 24 as yes its 90 days within a 180 day period). I definitely was not planning on doing anything illegally or trying to slip something past the embassy. I will look into the youth visa as i am less than 35 years. Thanks again.

Annabella,
Someone mentioned me in an above post. I’d recommend joining a Facebook group call Americans Living in Italy. But to other posts, one can NOT have any earned income with an Elective Visa. And post pandemic with millions more unemployed, I seriously doubt Italy will issue any work visas, unless of course you are smart enough to have developed a Covid19 vaccine.