The fight against tax evasion is increasingly intertwined with a run-up to the latest data, to the information that can best serve as a semaphore for diversifying the good taxpayers from the bad ones.
Thus the obligation for banks and other financial intermediaries begins to take shape, already provided for in the Salva-Italia decree, to provide details of the bank transactions of its customers.
The flow of new incoming data, as reiterated by the director of the Revenue Agency Attilio Befera, will serve the tax authorities with a twofold objective: strengthen and strengthen the system of controls and draw upas a precautionary measure, selective lists of taxpayers at greater risk of tax evasion.
The instrument, still under technical scrutiny for its effective implementation, still today presents many "inconsistencies" of an applicative and functional nature. The first difficulty concerns the necessary remodeling of IT structures within credit institutions, for the cataloging and sending of sensitive data.
The second problem, far more delicate, concerns the quality of the information. The numerical mass in the hands of banking operators is enormous, and it would be unthinkable as well as highly expensive to carry out a total screening of the movements made.
The proposed solution is to limit current account balances on an annual basis, grouping the main financial transactions into 26 macro-items – according to a provision of the Revenue Agency issued last December.
While on the one hand the provision represents a powerful weapon in the hands of the public administration, on the other hand it marks the definitive cessation of banking secrecy in Italy.
The Revenue Agency, however, reassures on the fact that the taxpayer will be duly informed of the specific data that the intermediary will send to the tax authorities.
So far in Italy, tax investigations have only represented a verification activity to support the assessment, unlike in other European countries, such as France, where the investigations are already functional to the selection of taxpayers to be assessed.
