In reading about Italy's confiscatory's tax system, it seems to me that one possible solution would be to work around the 183 day limit. For example, unless I am wrong, one could obtain a Permesso di Soggiorno(Let's use January 1 as that date),stay for 6 months(180 days), return to the U.S(in my case) to visit family and friends for a month or so and then return back. As the Permesso is an annual renewal anyway as I understand it, it strikes me that it would be far less expensive to buy a couple of plane tickets once a year than to give the Italian government 25 plus Percent of your Social Security. As we are planning to retire there, our goal is to live on our combined SS, which may indeed be impossible if the government is taking 25 plus %. Any thoughts on this?