Italians turn to Web to battle tax evasion

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As Italy's cash-strapped government launches its latest bid to crack down on tax evasion of up to $192 billion a year, it is getting a little help from mobilization on social networks.

Blogs, Facebook groups and mobile apps are all being used to encourage Italians who have long turned a blind eye to rampant corruption to report shops, restaurants, doctors and dentists who are dodging taxes.

Edoardo Sera, a 27-year-old IT consultant, along with some friends recently, launched the website tassa.li, which translates as "tax.them", to report the fraudsters.

The website pulls together the individual reports into a "tax evasion map" and calls for people to boycott businesses that are not pulling their weight.

The Facebook group "Friends of Receipts" and the website evasori.info have taken an even more aggressive approach, publishing names and addresses.

Public anger against tax evaders is rising as the debt crisis demands ever deeper sacrifices by ordinary Italians, who have been forced to accept three austerity packages worth 80 billion euros in the past year alone.

The challenge is a worthy but daunting one after years of laxity under the long-serving former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who famously said in 2004: "If I'm asked for 50 percent, I feel morally obliged to evade taxes."

Tax authorities last year managed to claw back 11 billion euros but experts say this is only the tip of the iceberg in a country where doctors and dentists often offer their clients a discount if they do not ask for an official receipt.

Berlusconi's replacement, Mario Monti, came to power in November calling for a radical change to defend "honest taxpayers".

Tax authorities have heeded his call, launching a high-profile raid on Dec 30 on the exclusive ski resort of Cortina d'Ampezzo.

Eighty tax inspectors swooped on the town, checking restaurants, bars, luxury stores and the owners of luxury cars.

The checks led to a massive 400-percent increase in declared turnover from the resort's businesses compared to the previous season.

Out of 133 luxury cars checked, 42 owners had declared incomes of less than 30,000 euros a year.

The government is not relying on high-profile raids alone and has pushed for a greater role for Equitalia - a tax collection agency that is widely hated for its strong arm methods and has been the target of a string of attacks.

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About the broadcaster:

Emily Cheng is an editor at China Daily. She was born in Sydney, Australia and graduated from the University of Sydney with a degree in Media, English Literature and Politics. She has worked in the media industry since starting university and this is the third time she has settled abroad - she interned with a magazine in Hong Kong 2007 and studied at the University of Leeds in 2009.