Tax authorities: a surge in audits in 2025. Here’s how tax evaders end up in the crosshairs

With regard to the relationship between the number of audits and the total number ofVAT numbers, the Italian Revenue Agency has, in recent years, ‘has focused its efforts – as clarified in the Ministry of Economy and Finance’s response – on an increasingly targeted selection of taxpayers characterised by high risk indicators, thanks in part to the implementation of advanced data analysis tools’.

This approach “enables us to strengthen, in a targeted manner, efforts to combat tax evasion, by making tax audits more effective and reducing the impact on taxpayers who comply with tax regulations’”. Indeed, as the Ministry of Economy further emphasises, ‘effective action to combating tax evasion, must maximise the risk of an audit for those who show signs of breaching tax legislation, whilst minimising the likelihood of subjecting those who have correctly fulfilled their obligations to an investigation, as this would result in a wasteful expenditure of public resources’.

Furthermore, as *L’Economia* goes on to explain, ‘to determine the rate of coverage of tax evasion, it does not appear sufficient to divide the number of audits by the target population, as this would only be correct if one were to assume that all taxpayers present tax risk profiles’.

It should also be noted that ‘the number of checks must be assessed within the broader context of the measures put in place to safeguard public finances, bearing in mind that automated checks on tax returns essentially cover 100 per cent of taxpayers and that, in addition to post-filing checks, various types of pre-filing checks are carried out’.

The question raised by the M5S also sought clarification on the fact that 14 per cent of the amounts claimed via informal notices is paid by taxpayers, interpreting this as a ‘sign of a tendency to defer payments whilst awaiting tax amnesties’. On this point, the Ministry of the Economy clarifies that the ‘14 per cent paid by taxpayers in relation to notices of irregularities concerning the 2020–2022 tax returns does not appear significant, as a considerable proportion of the amounts claimed through these notices is paid by taxpayers via instalment plans, which are still ongoing. It should also be borne in mind that a large proportion of the sums claimed in these notices (approximately 59 per cent) is collected through entry on the tax roll’, and these amounts are also paid to the Revenue Agency for Collection (Ader) via instalment payments made by taxpayers. In essence, this is a ‘snapshot of a dynamic process that is constantly evolving over time’.