Risk analysis and more and more prevention: the moves to stop evaders in advance

'Prevention is better than cure' went the old slogan. Not least because 'curing' in this case would mean carrying out a number of controls on an audience that is vastly larger than the number of potential controls to be deployed in the field. And so here comes to the rescue the logic of the game of anticipation on which the IRS is trying to make a breakthrough in the counter-evasion, even going beyond the logic of the follow-up control. On which the Court of Auditors intervened in the report on the general State accounts (see 'Il Sole 24 Ore' of 27 June). Report from which it emerges how, pointing the spotlight on the Isa subjects (i.e. VAT numbers subjected to tax report cards) in construction, controls concern 5.1 per cent of the audience (just over 5,700), a percentage higher than the general average that stops at 3.8 per cent.

But we must go further and also consider prevention work. Even in the area of construction work. This is a change of pace that the financial administration has taken with the strategy of compliance and alerts, which make it possible, almost in real time, to highlight anomalies thanks to the support of the information available in the databases. On construction work, great help comes from risk analysis. This work involves the Revenue Agency and the Guardia di Finanza in a task force committed, through data cross-referencing, to identifying anomalies and translating them into immediate operability.

A strategy that in recent years has had to deal with the phenomenon of false tax credits. The Guardia di Finanza, on the input of the judiciary, seized building and energy bonuses worth over EUR 600 million from January 2024 to May 2025. The trend in 2024 compared to 2023 is decreasing, as also highlighted by the Court of Auditors, but the reasons for this are to be found in the regulatory changes that have characterised the sector and on the other hand in the investigative pressure put in place by the Guardia di Finanza on the authority of the judiciary. Overall, as of November 2021, the counter indicates over EUR 9.1 billion in non-existent receivables subject to preventive seizure. In addition to this, the system of alerts to the Inland Revenue to block the offsetting of risky credits, which since August 2023 has made it possible to avoid the use in F24 of amounts amounting to EUR 3.1 billion. In total, the blocking system managed by the Inland Revenue Agency has allowed 5.5 billion euro to be rejected and thus excluded from the market from the beginning of 2023 to date.

But the attention of the Italian tax authorities and the Revenue Agency is more wide-ranging, because through checks and controls againstbuilding operators, not only evasion but also fraud and other undeclared phenomena are brought to light.