The president of the Court of Auditors, Luigi Giampaolino, in a hearing in Parliament citing a recent report by the Ministry of the Economy, said that the effective tax burden (that is, compared to the GDP purified from the underground economy) has soared up to 53 percent . The Minister of Economic Development Flavio Zanonato also expressed his opinion on the unbearable fiscal burden, speaking at the Confesercenti assembly: "We need to lighten the tax burden which is at unsustainable levels for those who pay taxes down to the last cent”.
Giampaolino said that tax evasion "continues to be a very serious problem". "The South and Islands are the realities where the propensity to evade is most intense with over 40% of VAT and 29% of Irap, compared to levels almost halved in the North of the country - continued the president of the Court of accounts – While on the absolute values the differences are inverted: most of the evasion is concentrated in the North-West, areas in which the most significant share of the volume of business and income takes place”. Giampaolino recalled that as far as VAT is concerned, the "propensity not to declare" remains high with a tax subtraction in 2011 of 46 billion euros. And the evasion of Irap is also "very serious". Taking the two taxes together, "the revenue gap created by the tax evasion estimated by the Revenue Agency would amount to 2011 billion in 50 alone".
Another problem mentioned by Giampaolino is the phenomenon of the underground economy, which has reached "relevant dimensions: up to 18% of GDP and places our country in second place in the international ranking led by Greece".
