The fight against tax evasion is giving important results in Italy. The Italian Revenue Agency boosted Treasury coffers by 9.1 billion Euros thanks to focused and scientific enforcement activities in 2009. A real record that increases by 2.1 billion Euros (+32%) the growth already registered in 2008. An excellent performance confirmed by the overcoming of the standard target (7.2 billion Euros).

The fight against tax evasion is giving important results in Italy. The Italian Revenue Agency boosted Treasury coffers by 9.1 billion Euros thanks to focused and scientific enforcement activities in 2009. A real record that increases by 2.1 billion Euros (+32%) the growth already registered in 2008. An excellent performance confirmed by the overcoming of the standard target (7.2 billion Euros).

These important results have been achieved by implementing several focused enforcement actions. In particular, the Italian Tax Administration: has put under control luxury goods and services in order to detect taxpayers with a purchasing power higher than they declare (28,000 controls in 2009  + 81% compared to 2008); has tightened investigations on tax heavens, on fictitious residences in other Countries and on tax frauds; has increased enforcement activities to discover fraudulent Vat compensations; and has strengthened controls supported by financial investigations (9,000 in 2009 - + 25% compared to 2008), risk analysis and large enterprises tutoring. This last activity, that required a strategic plan and innovative procedures,  follows the path already practiced by other countries such as Great Britain, Australia, Canada, USA, Ireland and Netherland.

Other significant data, proving the efficiency of enforcement activities put in the field by the Revenue Agency, is related to verifications with acceptance, that in 2009 increased by 72% compared to 2008.
The Italian Revenue Agency, in order to know the consequences of enforcement activities on taxpayers' behavior, is starting a survey, a sort of follow up, on discovered tax evaders to measure the tax compliance level in the subsequent years.
The Tax Administration confirms for 2010 this successful enforcement strategy and it is developing a more and more effective and efficient approach in order to tackle even more people and business owners who deliberately attempt to avoid their tax responsibilities. (va.ib.)

The Italian Revenue Agency is improving and increasing the range of services delivered to taxpayers. In fact, services provided in 2009 reached the amount of 9,896,089 and rose by 9.86% compared with 2008 (9,016,147). This is due to the simplification process that, together with the IT innovations, aims at guaranteeing citizens even more services, available for everyone. Within this framework and with the scope of strengthening the dialogue between taxpayers and the revenue body, it has been released a new simplified, slim version of the VAT returns addressed to taxpayers performing simplest operations and it has been set up as well a particular e-channels for assisting intermediaries with specific requests.
 
As concerns the assistance delivered by the Contact Centres in 2009, they sent more than 44,000 replies to e-mails, rose by 33% compared with 2008 (33,000), and managed almost 1.7 million phone calls, increased by 19% (in 2008 they were around 1.4 millions). Contact Centres can also perform, by phone, corrective actions concerning notices of irregularities sent to taxpayers but found unlawful; in this specific topic, they managed more than 190,000 requests, registering an increase of 61% compared with the 118,000 requests of 2008.

Other increases to point out in 2009 concern: assistance on special tax schemes (in particular for "minimum taxpayers"), also delivered through a specific on-line tutoring (+77%), facilitations and authorizations (+76%), registration of acts and successions (+30%), the assistance for notices of payments related to tax returns (+27%), information on tax refunds (+11%) and issues, changes and copies of tax codes/health card (+5%). (al.len.)