There’s a Dark Side to the Boom in Milan: Rachel Sanderson

On a recent trip to a family friend’s in the UK, I was told their twentysomething was leaving London for a new job in Milan. Apart from a promotion and an exit from Britain’s economic doldrums, the attraction was a policy designed to reverse a brain drain that allowed him to avoid tax on as much as 70% of his income, his delighted father explained.

He’s not alone. The tax regime rolled out in Italy in 2015 and then made more generous in 2019 is behind the return not just of Italians who’ve been based abroad throughout the euro era — or more — but ...