Maurizio Leo, Italy’s deputy economy minister, said on Wednesday that the Italian government plans to use information on living standards posted on social media by entrepreneurs and others to identify tax evaders, Reuters reported.

As in Greece and other southern European countries, tax evasion is a deep-rooted problem in Italy, with successive governments in Rome unable to crack down on phenomena such as filing false tax returns or accepting payments without documents.

Speaking before the Parliament in Rome on Wednesday, Maurizio Leo announced that the government was working with professionals in the field to create a system of “data extraction”, which is the process of extracting data from the Internet to identify various related information. certain people

In the case of Italy, the government plans to use this technique to identify tax evaders.

“We have started discussions (on this subject) with the Italian data protection authority and they are fully available subject to the protection of personal data,” he told lawmakers, adding that “tax evasion is akin to terrorism.”

How much money is Italy losing to tax evasion?

Reuters notes that while some progress has been made in Italy in recent years in the fight against evaders, the phenomenon is still far from being eradicated.

According to data published last month by Rome’s finance ministry, the public budget lost 83.6 billion euros in unpaid taxes and fees in 2021, up from around 107.8 billion in 2016.

The government of new Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who took office in October 2022, has adopted several tax amnesty projects that have drawn sharp criticism from the opposition, which has accused the administration of not being interested in fighting evasion from paying taxes, and vice versa, seeks to please escapists.

Last December, Meloni abandoned a project to reduce fines for shopkeepers who refuse to accept more digital payments, which are seen as more transparent, after it was criticized by the European Commission.