- we want 1.4B, but it will take 10 years in courts
  - best I can do is 800M (or even lower)
  - ok, we'll take it

On this occasion, however:

> In all previous cases involving other international groups, once a settlement was reached and payment made, prosecutors closed related criminal investigations, either through plea deals or by dropping the cases.

> This time, however, Milan prosecutors did not share the tax authority's approach and decided to press ahead with their probe, leading to a request that the suspects be sent to trial.

Justice is independent in most EU countries.

That’s ok for the big players with deep pockets. For the little guy this is a much bigger problem. As it should. It would just be nice if law breaking would be a bigger problem for the bigger companies too.

My mother's husband owed 70k+ EUR in taxes and at some point the judge proposed and he agreed to 2800 euros.

The trick is to not have a bank account in your name only, you have it joint with a child/spouse and they can't take your money. Nor they can take your house, if you only have one.

Eventually under those situations the judges try to take anything rather than nothing.

I'm not defending this situation, just saying it's widespread and the fact that every two governments come one that does a "condono", which is essentially "let's agree with tax evaders for some 50% of the tax they owe so they are happy and we see something" doesn't help.

Harsher punishment should be warranted, but you can't go to prison for tax evasion.

Most sellers probably are foreign.

It’s crazy that executives can jump around the law and not face any criminal charges, then the company picks up the bill (although I’m not ignorant thinking this isn’t usual)

I’m just curious to learn more about how often this is the case and you usually what happens with people afterward

I misfiled stuff a few times and got fined, it's annoying but it's not something that will break your bank.

The behaviour of the tax office varies quite a lot from country to country tho.

Businesses who get into trouble because of taxes are doing it intentionally. Or somebody in the company does it intentionally.

> In percentage terms this means that during the 1970s between 15 and 20 percent of Italians evaded taxes while the rate climbed to 26 percent in the 1980s. In the 1990s, tax evasion fell again, hovering between 15 and 20 percent. Workers employed in manufacturing evade very little, whereas the highest evasion rates can be found among the self-employed

> The severity of evasion becomes obvious when we consider that the Italian state annually collects only a total of €350 billion while losing €250 billion through evasion (D’Attoma 2016).

> If one asks Italians why they evade taxes, they primarily say that they evade because everyone else does so

> A distant second is the reason that Italians would be more likely to pay taxes if they had the feeling that the state would spend their money more wisely. Much lower in the ranking come issues such as the soft penalties for evasive behavior, the complexity of the tax rules, and the unlikeliness of being caught. A total of 87.1 percent of all Italians think that their fellow citizens evade taxes

Big companies have the opportunity to make tax elusion (there is a reason why many Italian companies have legal HQ in Netherlands or Luxembourg), small companies, artisans and freelancers usually avoid to pajly VAT

Each time I got a piece of mail asking my to call the IRS to clear it up, and every time the agent was nice and very helpful clearing it up, and not fined.

I am occasionally called upon by the local consulate to perform my civic duty and vote.

Just this week I sent them back my ballot, now marked, for this referendum in a sealed envelope.

This referendum required me to dig more deeply than usual into Italian politics before I could decide which way I wanted to vote.

But don't trust me, ask your lawyer.

Italian here. It's not like that: the referendum is about definitely enforcing the career separation about public persecutor and judges. Actually they are under the same authority and the member of this authority are elected according to a sort of political parties (unique case in the whole EU) and this creates some distortions in career growths and nominations. The new schema will create two different authorities and the members will be selected according to a ballot.

A similar proposal was made by the left wing parties few years ago, when they were at the government

Is this some indirect effect of that?

Even if billionaires don't pay income tax and are only taxed occasionally when they sell assets, there isn't much doubt that the corporations they create and invest in generate massive amounts of tax revenue in the countries they operate. Not to mention all the revenue generated from property tax, income tax from their employees getting paid by the company, local fines and fees, sales tax, import duties, etc.

You can want the super wealthy to pay more tax when they sell stuff to fund their lifestyles, but that doesn't mean their work isn't generating large amounts of economic activity which turns into tax revenue for governments.

New Zealand. The Accident Compensation Corporation, a compulsory insurance scheme, is absolutely feral. Will crush you "because rules" without a thought.

Namely, it also changes the self-regulating body (the CSM, Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura) of the judiciary so that the government and parliament have a bit more authority and the judiciary have a bit less: the organ is split in two, its judiciary members are no longer elected but picked randomly while a part is decided by the political side, and there's an even higher special tribunal.

Proponents say this is necessary, opponents say this is leading towards stronger power of the political majority over the judiciary.

> the corporations they create and invest in generate massive amounts of tax revenue

Economic activity does generate tax revenue, billionaires generate economic activity. But if we took the billions (leave them millions, gready as they are) and spread it around it would have the opportunity to generate much more economic activity

The concentration of wealth, and the resulting concentration of income and widespread middle class impoverishment is catastrophic for our economy.

It is why, in real terms, incomes have been static for thirty years whilst the size of the economy has roughly doubled

Now, roughly one third of CSM members is nominated by the Parliament and the other one is elected by judges, according to the "correnti" (a sort of parties)