Returning to Italy two years after unpaid ticket

What is your nationality? Are you an EU national?

http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/index_en.htm

I am from the US

bf,

I doubt that anyone here will be able to answer that question definitively. I doubt that immigration and traffic fine data systems have been linked (yet), but one never knows. You'll probably just have to take your chances.

Is there a reason you didn't pay the tickets?

Note that there are also some potentially expensive "caveats" to be aware of when using trains and other public transit. If you need more information on those, post another note.

Good luck!

Thanks Ken, That is what I was thinking, but just wondering. Caveats to train travel?

Well...you could always just pay them - then no worries.

If the tickets were issued in error - ZTL violation when your rental car plate should have been registered to enter the ZTL to access your hotel or rental car return or other qualifying reason - you should have appealed when you first learned of them.

Bottom line - if you can afford to return to Italy - you can afford to pay the fines.

Ken, Thought I had paid, but later realized the charges were from the Credit card company. The admin fees mirrored the fines.

Ken, Thought I had paid, but later realized the charges were from the Credit card company. The admin fees mirrored the fines.

bf,

The credit card charges are different from the actual fines. The rental firms apply a separate charge to credit cards to cover their "costs" for providing information to the authorities on who was renting the car at that time. The actual fines would have been received by mail, as much as a year after the offenses.

I'll send you a PM with my usual "boilerplate" on public transit in Italy.

Nobody will stop you at the border for that. The frontier police will have no info regarding unpaid traffic tickets. The worst it can happen would be if you drive to Lucca and get into an accident then maybe (and that's a big maybe) they might find out in the course of the traffic investigation you have an unpaid fine (which you can always claim to have never received) and ask you to pay then. I even strongly doubt that possibility too. The authorities in Italy collect only about 40% of the fines issued, even to Italians. I think less than 1/4 of those issued to foreigners get paid. And only because of their good conscience because they haven't figured out an effective enforcement mechanism, not even within the EU.

EDIT:
Only 30 to 35% of traffic tickets is collected.
In Naples, as one might expect, the City manages to collect only 4% of the total.
I don't think they'll put you in jail. Too many Italians would need to be jailed before you.

http://m.ilgiornale.it/news/2016/03/06/i-comuni-puntano-sulle-multe-cosi-aumentano-gli-incassi/1232863/

So at the very least you will find out if the old saying "Your sins will find you out" applies in your case.

Roberto, thanks for your reply. Still on the fence.

Roberto, thanks for your reply.

One caveat for train travel: if you get fined for not validating a ticket, pay the fine.

There are numerous reports of collection agencies being hired to collect the fines from North Americans. Don't be surprised if this happens to you, with huge fees involved.

Donna

yeah that doesn't fly in the USA Donna. Italian traffic tickets go no where here.

Actually, Donna is correct, Thats why I'm on the fence. The collection agency has tacked on fees that make the cost ridiculous. My bad for not paying the original