Forget Italy. Every one seems to be trying to fiddle you. Forget the mafia. The worst one's the government! A whole lotta taxes and barely any services in return. When I was living there in the '80s a journalist did a head count on how many taxes an ordinary working person would have to legally pay in the course of 1 financial year............186!!! That's 186 different taxes; income tax, council tax, road tax, television tax and so on. The best one is that there's even a refrigirator Tax!!! It seems that there's an obscure law that states that anyone owning a refrigirator is supposed to pay a tax on it!! But here comes the funniest part; it costs more to collect this tax than what the gov'mt makes out of it. So if you go to the local post office and ask for the form to pay your refrigirator tax, they won't give it to you!!
Tell you a little secret. If you really do want to come to Europe, try Austria. Beautiful country, good skiing, almost guaranteed summers, slow laid-back lifestyle in the countryside. Property in the country side is cheap, hardly anyone buys, almost everyone rents. Good services, nice roads, natives are generally harmeless.
