Earthquake-Area 7% Tax Towns

The 7% regime has a second doorway that has nothing to do with the south. Comuni named in the annexes to Italy's post-earthquake legislation — the Lazio, Umbria, and Marche towns struck by the 2016–17 Central Apennines earthquakes — qualify under the same 30,000-resident cap that applies in the southern regions. (A far stricter 3,000-resident cap once applied to these towns; it was abolished in 2022, though older articles still cite it.) More than a hundred of the listed comuni currently qualify. One boundary note: quake-affected towns in Abruzzo qualify through the region-wide southern route, so you will find them on our Abruzzo page.

The history deserves a plain telling. In August 2016 an earthquake centered near Accumoli and Amatrice killed nearly 300 people; further major shocks that October struck the area around Visso and Ussita, and the sequence came only seven years after the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake in neighboring Abruzzo. Reconstruction has been running ever since, visibly further along in some centers than in others. The tax rule serves the same policy goal as the rebuilding funds: bringing residents, and their spending, back to Apennine towns that emptied out.

The eligible list runs from tiny to mid-size. Among the smallest: Accumoli (about 500 residents) and Amatrice (about 2,200) in Lazio's Rieti province, along with Leonessa (about 2,100); Arquata del Tronto (about 900) and the spa town Acquasanta Terme (about 2,400) on the Marche side; Visso (about 900) and Ussita (about 350) inside the Monti Sibillini National Park; and Preci (about 700) and Cascia (about 2,900) in Umbria's Valnerina. Because the cap is 30,000, larger listed towns qualify too (Norcia, Camerino, and Tolentino among them), while cities above it, including Ascoli Piceno, Rieti, Macerata, and Spoleto, do not. The April 2026 reform raised the cap here as well, from 20,000 to 30,000, adding a handful of larger listed towns at the same time as the southern expansions.

Do the homework with open eyes. Housing stock ranges from fully rebuilt to still-closed, so the condition of a specific property (and the reconstruction status of its hamlet) matters more here than anywhere else in the regime. Rome's airports serve the Lazio towns in roughly two hours by road, Ancona serves the Marche side, and the referral hospitals are in Rieti, Ascoli Piceno, and Foligno. If the numbers and the mission appeal, start with the interactive map and plan a slow scouting trip; these towns reward the time.