The Italian tax office sounded a fresh alarm over the extent of tax dodging in Italy on Wednesday, saying more than 270 billion euros of taxes went unpaid each year - the equivalent of almost 20% of GDP.
Presenting a report on income tax data for 2004, the tax office said that for every 100 euros of income tax paid, 55 euros were evaded.
It said the phenomenon had steadily grown since 1980, when evaded taxes amounted to just under 44 billion.
By 2002, the figure had risen to 220.6 billion, it said, adding that over the period 2002-2004 alone, it rose by 50 billion.
The tax office stressed that honest tax payers were the ones who paid the most for their cheating fellow nationals, shouldering one of the highest tax burdens in Europe.
It said that Italy's official fiscal burden of 41-42% of GDP was far below the "real" figure, which was above 50% and had been so since 1989, hitting a peak of 55% in 1997.
Economy Minister Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, the architect of this year's unpopular, 34.7-billion-euro budget which contained major tax hikes and spending cuts, admitted last week that Italy's fiscal burden was "excessive".
The centre-left government of Premier Romano Prodi has pledged to crack down on tax dodgers as a way of bringing tax rates back down.
Only 1.6% of Italians declare earning more than 75,000 euros a year. More than 90% claim to earn less than 40,000.
Anger among law-abiding taxpayers grew last October with the release of statistics which appeared to show that whole categories of self-employed workers were vastly under-declaring their earnings.
The figures showed that jewellers declared average annual earnings of 16,650 euros; restaurant owners 13,450 euros and estate agents 20,560 euros, while taxi drivers, who pay up to 200,000 euros on the black market for their licences, declare less than 1,000 euros a month in earnings.
Shoe sellers in the northern town of Bolzano appeared to set a record by declaring average earnings of less than 60 euros per month.
