Grrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!! non-boaty

[Metabarca]

Sorry guys but I've got to get this off my back... It's tax return time in Italy and I've just been told that the income I've declared does not agree with what the treasury reckons someone like me should be earning so I have to make good the difference. Sod the fact that I worked less because there was less work to be had, because I took a week off after my father died and more time to help my mother, time to write my university course, time to scratch my belly because I didn't feel like working... I also have to tell them how many words I have written in the year (I write and translate) !!!!!! can you believe it?! Just as a café owner has to state how many coffees he sells in a year (you can imagine them ticking them off in a book every day!). Guys, stay out of Europe- the bureaucrats have gone completely barmy here, and there's NO comeback, no-one to write to, no-one to complain to if I happen not to agree with their parameters (nor how they calculated them - they might be (are) wrong but I've no right to know how they decide what someone in my situation should be earning. F*** the whole lot of them - I'm off sailing!

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[chas]

Why not emigrate to England?

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[tcm]

You have my sympathy. We're not quite at this stage here - but soon will be at the rate we're sleepwalking towards govt having lots of power, and not needing any principles other than the fixed belief that all government is a very wonderful thing. There seems less and less concentration on how to expand the economy - we're almost entirely focussed on dividing up the same cake, taxing it and monitoring it.

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[arran]

We\'re not quite?!

I'm afraid I have to disagree we are well and truly there...

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[Metabarca]

Why not emigrate to England?
- the wevver
- the traffic
- the Northern line
- house prices
- the sameness

But I miss:
- pubs
- scant but efficient bureaucracy (I DO know what it's like in the UK and you CANNOT believe what it's like here)
- BBC (no really!)
- beer

No, my next stop might be Slovenia when they're in: it's only 5 km away from where I live but they're North European in mentality - at least as far as infrastructure goes.

I mean, can you believe the scam the govt. had here in Italy in recent months: 'give us a few thou euros and we won't check your books ever and you will be protected from all legal claims for misdemeanours'. In other words, if I hadn't paid any tax for the last ten years, some euro 3000 would have had me 'pax' for ever. But since I haven't paid the scam, I'm sure they will inspect my books, find something wrong (the tax return is over 50 pages long...) and sting me for it. Does it pay to be honest here? Like bu**ery.

Re the UK: dig your heels in!! Don't assume things are pretty much the same Europe-wide; they ain't. I know from living in France that it was a bureaucratic country, but the bureaucracy worked there and there was always someone to talk or complain to. Here, you have umpteen obligations to the gov but it's not reciprocated: pay VAT a day late? WHAM euro 750 fine without warning. Close your business? Wait 5 years to get your VAT credit back.
String 'em all up I say! Blood in the streets!

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[david_e]

Never seems quite balanced somehow - so the amount they spend never seems to relate to the services they (don't) provide, they perform badly but award themselves pay rises and pensions disproportionately, crime rates they don't keep in check etc etc - no matter which country you are in.

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[ParaHandy]

re: Complain to Silvio

Mr Berlusconi, whose partners include the anti-immigration Northern League and National Alliance of reformed neo-fascists, gave a contract aimed to win over apathetic voters tired of politicians' promises. The contract states that if he does not fulfil four out of five of promises, he will not run for the next parliament. The five promises were to lower taxes, cut crime, raise the minimum pension to one million lire (£300) a month, create at least 1.5 million jobs and start 40 per cent of the infrastructure projects listed in his manifesto.

There you have it .......... you can cross of the pension stuff, so taxes are definitely coming down ... aren't they?

Here's a little ditty I made earlier ...

And lo! There was their crony
Who happened to be called berlusconi
Who played a crooked tune on his piano
And owned almost everything in Milano
He had no invoices for all he tricked
they just fell off a Fiat truck he'd nicked





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[GeorgeP]

Italy is special

In 1994 I ran a project to put a pan-European accounting system in 7 countries throughout Europe. We gave up on Italy, the bureaucracy was so bad.

I'm back there again later this year for similar (SAP R3!) although just advice from a financial point of view, not part of the core team. Not looking forward to it.

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[Cornishman]

Try Cornwall instead of England. We've got no climate here - just weather. We have no Northern Line - no b****y line at all worth talking about. House prices would be OK if people lived in them all year round. Sameness? Definitely NOT the same as Italy - or England for that matter.
We have pubs - good uns too. And they sell beer. We have the BBC (even got BBC Radio Cornwall)
Excellent sailing - need I say more?

BTW I wonder how they will calculate Beckham's taxes if he signs for Milan? Number of broken bones sustained each year? Or maybe Mrs will do a deal.

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[Roberto]

Problem is...

"he who speaks louder is the one who is right", and with three (plus other national three) televisions he owns the volume knob; blame opposition and communists (italy like nkorea, cuba etc) for everything going wrong, ...er, everything

No fear (living abroad) of defining it an ongoing coup, more modern than in South America maybe, a glamour tie and a fifty teeth smile work wonders

Robert better stops here

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[Metabarca]

Re: re: Complain to Silvio

"so taxes are definitely coming down ... aren't they?"

ho ho! The only taxes that will come down will be Berlusconi's. Your ditty (much appreciated!) just about sums him up. He has never come forward to declare how he made his first 2 billion lire as a cruise-ship crooner to speculator. He was a mate of Craxi, of course. A whiff of slush fund, mayhap?!

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[Roberto]

Decrease taxes

He invented the trick that France would like to use too: reduce transfers to local authorities (which in turn will obviously be forced to fund themselves with increased local taxes)

And of course a couple of half naked gorgeous girls announcing the news on tv

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[warrior40]

Yes, time to go sailing then I should think!!!!!!!!

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[Sybarite]

It's a well known fact in Italy that there are at least 3 sets of books :
Tax
For the owner
For the bank ?
The real situation.

If you haven'y done any it's remiss of you.

Seriously a few years ago in France they reversed the burden of proof so that the tax authorities would have to substantiate their allegation. Does this apply in Italy?

Personnally I think they are bluffing. If you confident that you are right don't give in. They are probably used to people caving in to moral pressure.

John


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[Metabarca]

Sybarite, you are a reasonable man, but I live in a country where reasonableness don't apply. The burden of proof is on me: to prove I'm innocent, and only with official paperwork. None of your 'meet you halfway' compromise malarky here. Just to give you a taster: you get a parking fine which you find unfair and you want to query it. If your complaint is upheld, fine. If it's not, you're charged double. The probability of winning is considerably less than in Russian roulette...
And that's nothing compared to the heavy-handed approach of the tax authorites and the 'fiscal police'. A small kid was fined euro 250 because he walked out of the shop without the receipt for 10 cents.
I had an Australian mate whose firm invested £30 million in Trieste. They left after 5 years, sickened with it all. They were unable at any point despite having expensive consultants to get a single straight answer on any one of their enquiries after being whammied by the tax thieves. Return investment in Italy from foreigners is something below 1% apparently. Wonder why.

Back to your previous point: I wish I could keep separate books but it's not easy as a self-employed loner who has to invoice everything.

It's not paying taxes that gets me, unpleasant though this be. It's the Napoleonic, Bourbon, Fascist notion that government officials have here that if they're in uniform they're right, and you're not a citizen but a subject, and often a pain in the a**e too, so 'cough up and shut up'!
Unless you're a 'pezzo grosso', a big fish, in which case they cower. I played the part once and was amazed, amazed at how everything became simple. Clearly, the bureaucracy is there simply as a lever on poor Joe Public. Yeuch!

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[foxgoose]

You're dead right.

Years of running businesses in the UK and US have taught me that the only useful political principle is to have as little government as poss.

In my lifetime Maggie T was the only British politician who ever seriously believed in shrinking the apparatus of government - something which most Americans understand from birth.

With the ever expanding EU , regional govt & whatever the present lot won't be happy until the 45% of the population who already work for the state is up to 90%.

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[tcm]

PLeased other see this. Seems government unable to grasp idea that most priavtye sector workers
wake up
get food
get to work
get home
buy home
sort kids
sort hols and entertainment....

with zero reference to government. Period. so, 10% tax would seem ok to me -and then i (and metabarc?) might pay it, instead of nipping off and away.


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[Metabarca]

TCM: I did not leave UK to avoid UK tax ... I'd rather pay HM my pound of flesh than Berlusca. At least I see some results: libraries, computers in schools, shiny tanks, whatever. Here it's two pounds of flesh and I see fly-blown schools, very few libraries but lots of well-clad bureaucrats driving around in chauffeur-driven cars at my expense.

What's the biggest anchor I could fit to my boat? I could park her in international waters, cock two fingers at the lot of them and THEN I'd be happy!

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