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Comment by kfk | Hacker News Reader

This comment is unsubstantiated and false, please check: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_ta...

Yes Italians cheat on taxes, but on the total Italy is the 6th country in the world in terms of GDP/tax ratio. To give you an idea, Italy is just a bit below Nordic countries. In fact, the Italian government is quite effective in collecting taxes.

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When you look at how Guardia di Finanza is equipped, it's hard not to reach a similar conclusion.

But off-the-books work is pretty common, even in the north. It just falls between the cracks because it's typically not worth fighting against.

The typical complain it is not so much that not enough tax is collected. The issue is the perceived unfairness that salaried employees of medium and large companies which cannot meaningfully evade taxes, get a larger share of the tax burden than self employed, and to a lesser extent, employees of smaller companies that are more likely to be paid under the board.

Whether this perception reflect the reality today (or ever), I don't know.

I was looking into becoming self-employed in Italy around 2016, but to me it looked like there's even more taxation this way.

The INPS contributions were the same, but there was no tax-free threshold of €6k as it is for salaried employees.

I'm not Italian so perhaps I misread something.

You are missing the fact that some self-employed do not report some or all their income.

Also IIRC there are some reduced tax rates for self-employed below a certain age and income.

Oh, I'm well aware of that, it's just that I couldn't go this route.

IIRC that's for people under 35. I remember an Italian friend of mine complaining about this since he was 38 at the time.

> Italy is the 6th country in the world in terms of GDP/tax ratio.

and yet there are no countries in (mainland) europe with worse roads or infrastructure.

The correct measure would probably be the size of the informal/shadow economy.

Which is supposed to be included when calculating GDP. I think the issue is that the tax system is very inefficient there in the sense that some groups are significantly undertaxed while others don't neccesarily pay that much. This creates the overall impression that "Italian don't pay taxes".

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