Italy’s Golden Visa is Now Half-Price (and Easier)

you may well have heard of golden visa programs that offer residents and future citizenship to investors in countries like portugal in greece in spain in countries by other names such as ireland latvia and others but did you know that italy has its own golden visa that grants residents to investors probably not because they've done a very bad job promoting it and it was extremely expensive but now not only has italy made their program easier and more accessible but they've given it a big price cut [Music] hi i'm andrew henderson here at nomed capitalist we help seven and eight-figure entrepreneurs legally go where they're treated best you can learn more at nomadcapitalist.com and if you haven't heard of italy's own golden visa program i'm going to tell you how the program worked before they made some changes earlier this year and perhaps you understand why it has been so uncompetitive with other options in europe so a couple years ago italy rolled out its own version of a golden visa years after countries like portugal and spain had done the same to bring in real estate investment and in recent years invest into things like funds venture capital etc what italy rolled out a couple years ago was a program where you can invest 500 000 euros into an innovative startup one million euros into the share capital of an italian limited company or into some kind of charitable initiative or two million euros into government bonds and so if you compare those options to most of the other countries in europe that have similar programs most of those countries have real estate options which is very popular not only for people selling it because many of the programs that are sold by people on the internet are laden with commissions 10 15 20 in some cases but obviously investors overseas they like the idea of having a home they like the idea of buying something even if it's overpriced in some cases they like that real estate some countries rolled out you know bank deposit options essentially others rolled out funds that you can invest and are just simply putting your money in the bank or buying government bonds those all seemed lower risk and more enjoyable than investing in a startup after all who's vetting these innovative startups there was never really a great industry to do that and so out of all those options the only one that seemed relatively low risk was government bonds italy's bonds are rated triple b the outlook was recently upgraded to stable but had it not been they would have been in bad shape and so you know even a government bond from italy doesn't sound like the world's safest place to park your money and for 2 million euros you can spend a couple bucks more you can go to the uk and get their visa program ostensibly a better passport a cleaner program you know you can at the time you could have invested two million euros in cyprus when they made these changes for their citizenship by investment program had a citizenship and so just wasn't very competitive and so now what the government has done through its revival decree passed during the height of the coronavirus they have made some changes among other things in the country to the golden visa program and what they've done is they've slashed the price of two of the lower priced options in half so now you can invest 250 000 euros in innovative startup or 500 000 euros in an italian limited company so you know 250 000 euros is about as good as it gets for a passive investment into a european golden visa program you can go and you can create jobs in some of the programs or you can go and start a company and pay a certain amount of tax but for a passive investment that is among the lowest it ties greece's real estate requirement of 250 latvia's real estate requirement of 250 each of those programs have their own unique challenges and that in latvia you can only buy one property in greece it comes with all the hassles of greek taxes and the compliance with that so depending on where you're coming from i do work with people who they love the idea of investing in startups and so now 250 000 euros makes it a bit more palatable there are other benefits for example now though and so one of the other benefits that they rolled out with this new program is that while previously you had to spend uh basically one out of every two years in the country to have your visa renewed that made it pretty uncompetitive when you consider some of the other countries require no presence seven days presence half your time in italy potential tax issues you know even if they have a flat tax program now wasn't very advantageous especially for you know both chinese russian arab as well as americans who are looking for that pathway to a second passport but they don't want to change their lifestyle they figure if i can invest and make you know make my way towards a second passport without having to move and not having to commit that's a good deal if i have to invest and commit to living in one country for years probably not what i'm looking for right now so they've reduced that physical presence down to zero that's the first thing they've done what they've also done is allowed you to invest in a company which is a rather unique benefit for a golden visa generally golden visa investments would be made in your own name now we've talked a little bit before about the opportunity for some folks particularly in the u.s to use a retirement account through a much more complicated procedure to invest in certain golden visa projects and use like an ira for example that gets a little more complicated but what italy is allowing you to do is invest through a company which you can prove you are the the actual owner of and so that could particularly be interesting for americans who are running businesses overseas through foreign corporations where they have capital that is relatively tied up and it's captive that they can deploy that capital and have very nominal u.s tax consequences on that at least for now rather than taking the capital out and paying a much higher tax rate and so that makes it more palatable for people who have their money whether american or not tied up in a corporation somewhere outside of italy that you can invest in italy and title the property and make the investment that way and so that potentially can save you some money on tax the other benefit that they have put in place in italy is that unlike some of the other golden visa programs you will not need to make the investment until you were actually approved for the visa so rather than going and getting your tax number and opening your bank account and then moving the money in and then making an investment and then applying and then waiting they're going to say you do all the application first we'll screen you we'll do all the due diligence and then once you're approved then you make the investment and so you're not going to be in a situation where you go out and buy a property and even though you know no one that i'm working with is being rejected there are some people who do get rejected um because of criminal backgrounds or because of whatever other due diligence reasons come up in this case you know you have the certainty that not only do you get to to have that certainty but you get to hold on to your cash a little bit longer you're not investing and then applying you are applying uh and then investing italy depending on where you are coming from has a 100 000 euro flat tax so kind of competing with switzerland's lump sum tax you can move there you can pay that one flat tax if you're making millions of dollars millions of euros a year not a terrible deal overall you know the idea of being an italian resident i still think that there are more competitive options out there for sure unless you have a particular affinity for the startup space you know even if you do there are places like portugal where you can make investments into funds that invest in startups and so even if startups are your thing i think there are still other options out there my other challenge with italy is that i see them out of all the countries that offer golden visas perhaps alongside greece as being the most likely to roll out more aggressive tax measures in the future and so if you become an italian citizen there could be some potential wealth tax there could be some potential extra territorial taxation in the future am i saying that's going to happen for sure no and i think it's quite possible it won't but do i want to go and invest and commit to a country when there are potentially better options when a place like italy or greece is perhaps more likely than a portugal or an ireland or a latvia to be aggressive with me on taxes in the future to me italy has always come down to a lifestyle decision they're doing some of the right things they're bringing out flat taxes they're streamlining proceed procedures i like to see that it's a move in the right direction i'm not sure if it's enough of a move in the right direction to really garner the demand that they want particularly when other countries have real estate options have bank deposit options offer a cleaner easier path to a a good passport without the risks good if you like italy for everyone else probably still not on my radar how can nomad campus help you four ways number one subscribe to our channel and click the notification bell to make sure you get our new video every day number two get a copy of nomad capitalist the book you'll learn a lot of my personal experiences over a dozen years of studying this stuff as well as exactly some of the strategies that you can use to build your nomad capitalist plan number three if you're not sure where to start but you want to come and learn from my team and i you want to come and mingle with like-minded people learn more about our live conference nomad capitalist live it's coming up soon and number four if you want some help right now because you've got a burning issue you need something solved you want to lower your taxes get a second passport or build the nomad capitalist lifestyle of your dreams go to nomadcapless.com and click on become a client

Channel: Nomad Capitalist

Views: 239,921

Keywords: nomad capitalist, go where you're treated best, italy golden visa, real estate in italy, moving to italy, europe golden visa, greece golden visa, moving to europe, life in italy, moving to italy as an american, moving to italy from usa, flat tax, lump sum investment, government bonds, wealth tax, portugal golden visa 2020, italy taxes, european citizenship, citizenship by investment, italian passport, european passport benefits, european passport, moving overseas

Id: QSBdEg3e1pM

Length: 9min 28sec (568 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 11 2021