Italian Tax Inspectors Blitz Courmayeur

by Ulrika Lomas, Tax-News.com, Brussels

22 February 2012

Tax inspectors from the Italian Revenue Agency have again taken to making spot checks, this time at Courmayeur, to check whether its shops, restaurants and bars, even those on the ski slopes of Mont Blanc, are issuing the necessary tax receipts.

The weekend checks in Courmayeur by 70 tax inspectors, both in the town and in the huts high on the slopes, follow those at Christmas in Cortina, during the carnival in Viarregio, amongst the nightlife of Milan, in the festival of San Remo and amongst the street markets of Naples.

The unexpected controls have again produced notable results. In Courmayeur last Saturday, tax revenue rose, on average, by some 32% compared to the previous Saturday. Not only were various irregularities found in the recording of cash transactions, but also incongruities were discovered against previous declarations made by firms – not only, for example, simply in the number of restaurant tables and places, but also in the type of business actually undertaken.

The increased and well-publicised activity being shown this year by the Italian Revenue Agency, and also by Italy’s financial police, is intended to demonstrate that Mario Monti's new government is taking a hard-line approach to tax evasion by actively challenging individuals and service sector companies that historically have significantly under-declared earned income.

Its Director, Attilio Befera, has already pointed to the Revenue Agency’s new ability to crosscheck taxpayers’ spending against declared incomes as the weapon that might win the government’s war on tax evasion. He has expressed the hope that, as taxpayers become more aware of the armoury now at the Agency’s disposal, Italians would be more willing to become tax-compliant voluntarily.

It is foreseen that the greatest leap forward in the Agency’s combatting of tax evasion will arrive from the Agency’s new “redditometro”, a computerized system which is presently in an experimental stage that will be finalized shortly. The new system will be able to trace individuals' expenditure in more than 100 different categories to find disparities between spending and declared incomes. It will be able to compare the data of over 22m families or around 50m individuals.

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