Taxes...again

Fully 66% of all taxpayers in Italy claim an income of less than $26,000. That's in a country where 188,000 own high-powered cars such as Maseratis, Ferraris or Porsches. Another 42,000 own yachts. Add to that the more than 500 who manage to scrounge private jets or helicopters out of their meagre salaries and you have a lot of folks evading taxes. No wonder Italy is trashed.

But Italy's new prime minister is cracking down hard to try and recoup billions in lost tax revenues -- especially in places like the luxurious hometown of the late Emperor Tiberius, the Bay of Naples in Capri. The country's most exclusive ski resort -- Cortina d'Ampezzo -- is the latest target where, over Christmas, tax evasion was revealed to have been on an endemic scale, not only among crooked boutique and restaurant owners, but also among their Lamborghini-driving patrons.

This is all in an effort to turnaround Italy's tax-evasion mentality, encouraged by Berlusconi's own behaviour. The hope is that investor confidence will return and help reverse the country's crippling $1.9 trillion debt. Good luck with that.

When I worked at Revenue Canada, it appeared to me that we always targeted ethnic minorities in our audit programs because the mentality of the majority of these communities was one of cultural tax evasion; the less tax you paid, the smarter you were. Naturally, we did not admit it, but with limited resources, we had to put them to use where the payoff would be greatest. On the customs side, we targeted flights from Jamaica and other Caribbean islands for drug and gun shipments. Plain and simple.

As I have ranted before, if you want to have a great country, you have to redistribute its wealth. And that is what taxes are all about. Otherwise, move to Italy or Greece.