Nickles, dimes, pennies, and Italian regulations
I have recently gone about opening a "Partita IVA" ( http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partita_IVA ) so I can act as an independant consultant here. Like everything here, it's a pain in the neck, but opening it wasn't all that bad, compared to other close encounters of the bureaucratic kind that I've had.
When it came time to send out my first bill, of course I had to get the accountant to help me put it together (simply sending a bill with the amount to be paid would be way too easy). The crowning touch, though, was that I had to go to the "tabaccheria" and purchase a 1.81 (one Euro, eight-one cents) "marca da bollo" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_revenue_stamp ) to affix to the aforementioned bill. This is only necessary, however, in cases where the bill exceeds 77.47 (seventy-seven Euro, fourty-seven cents). The end result was that between asking the accountant for help, going over to the store to get the stamp, and so on, I probably wasted in excess of a half an hour of my life for something that really isn't that complicated.
Who dreams this bullshit up, anyway?
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about 1 hour later:
David, I agree those numbers do seem weird, but they come from when we still had ITL here.
3500 ITL → 1,81€
150000 ITL → 77,47€
They don't seem that strange, after all :) -- I agree that regulations should be updated to use saner values now that we've been using euros for 10 years. :)
Have a nice day! David
about {{count}} hours later:
Who dreamed this up? Americans perhaps?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_stamp
Sorry, could not resist ...
about {{count}} hours later:
Prepare yourself to budget a whole day every month, unpaid, to dedicate to bureaucratic bollocks. Maybe a bit less if you don't work with PAs, but I'd say not much less.
Also, please drop me a mail with attached a picture of your face after you fill your first http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_di_settore
about {{count}} hours later:
@Enrico: ROFL!!!!!!!
@Dave:
in case no one said to you before: Welcome to our beatiful contry. ;) ... I'm sorry man (seriously)
about {{count}} hours later:
@David: Aha! That makes sense. I still don't get why I had to go buy the stupid thing in the first place. Something to do with not having to pay VAT/IVA on it, which I don't get either. I'll let the accountant deal with that side of things...
@Gerhard: the revenue stamp was an innovative idea to help combat corruption. In the 18th century. It's 2010 now, though. In any case, this indicates they were actually dutch in origin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamp_Act
@Enrico: actually I asked about the studio di settore (I've heard of them) prior to going through the whole thing, and supposedly that's not likely to affect me, according to the accountant.
@Jack: nowhere is perfect, certainly not my country either. Living in another country means you have to learn to deal with the good and the bad. It just seems like Italy, as of late, has done little, if anything to improve its imperfections:-/