Dear tax evaders, I’m the only gentleman who pays taxes in a country of beggars

Italy is a country of saints, poets and navigators, none of whom pays taxes: the saint evades the Imu by making each of his properties appear as a place of worship and all his possessions as a relic, the poet does everything off the books and in the meantime asks for the Citizenship Income, the navigator gives false indications on imported goods to evade duties and then take all his savings to a small island in some tax haven. The cliché of Italians “pizza, spaghetti, mandolin” it doesn’t say much about us, unless we specify that all three are sold and purchased without a receipt. The budget of the Guardia di Finanza this year revealed that there are almost 9,000 total tax evaders discovered in the last twelve months, +54 percent compared to the previous year. And these are only the ones who caught, think of the others! Our underground economy is reminiscent of the recent “Ocean Gate”: only the rich can afford to sink down to explore the wreckage of our public debt, but they risk imploding from a lethal mix of tax burden and taxpayer anger. According to the Minister of Justice Nordio, “even an honest businessman cannot pay all taxes”. I could also agree – both on the unfairness of our tax system and on its complexity – but I don’t understand why an honest entrepreneur can’t, while I can!

Let me be clear, I don’t consider myself a victim of “state lace” as Giorgia Meloni calls the taxman (the only thing that the tax office has made me burn in all these years is my stomach); I simply understood that I am the only gentleman, the only gentleman, in a country of beggars. In fact, I believe it is completely useless to place the civic emphasis on paying taxes: I understand Mattarella must do it – “Everyone should contribute to the community as required by the Constitution” – it is his job; but let us not delude ourselves about the effectiveness of certain warnings, you know who cares about the Constitution to someone who sleeps peacefully knowing he owes the state thousands of euros. Just as the ethical-moral discourse around taxes is now more desperate than cloying. The only truth that can explain the mass tax evasion that characterizes this country is a marked avarice, a monstrous stinginess, an inhuman micragna, an abysmal lice. It is useless to focus on a fairer tax system, whether it is flat (“Roman-style”) or patrimonial (“everyone pays what they get”): there will always be that – indeed those, indeed almost all! – that he’ll be smart with the rest, that he has 50 whole and says he’ll change it and give it back to you but you’ll never see it again, or that the wind will blow directly.

I claim my paying taxes – many, too many – not out of a sense of duty, but out of dandyism. By urbanity. I’m not a redneck like you, when the Equitalia tax file arrives, I don’t even look at how much it is, I immediately put my hand in my wallet to pay and I also leave a generous tip for the financier. Don’t worry, dear friends and tax evaders: I’ll do it. I offer you the state system, law enforcement, infrastructure and the NHS not because I’m a good citizen, but because I’m a gentleman. Consider it a disinterested gift, because I already know that you will never reciprocate, because you tax evaders have no class or courtesy. You are just beggars.