Aspects of Italian Taxation.
One of the most annoying aspect of living in Rome as a foreigner in the 60’s, was the constant requirement to purchase the famous 90 lire sheet of paper every time you had to make a request or apply for anything. Only by doing so was the application or document legal. These lined sheets of foolscap paper could only be purchased at a tobacco kiosk, along with stamps and a special breed of cigarette called Alfe. They were a product in their own right, you had to hold and smoke them horizontally for fear the tobacco would fall out. My friends used to joke that they were made with the factory floor sweepings, which no doubt contained a degree of truth . I remember considerable coughing followed each puff, so in hind sight it was just as well I didn‘t settle permanently in Italy, as I had intended. But to return to the famous official paper issued by the government, each sheet, if memory serves me correctly had a pretty little blue crest at the top to indicate its official nature. I often thought this was the greatest revenue raising devise ever thought up by a national government. Everything had to be written on these sheets , requests for a student pass, to having the electricity turned on in your flat. Even unofficial documents had to be written on the famous sheets to make them legal.
Another major source of income for the Government [ they changed on a monthly bases] was the flexible nature of tax assessment. One plus one does not necessarily add up to two. Not that this worried me personally on my megaer resources, but several foreign friends had all sorts of tax troubles. Simple addition could result in any number the tax department decreed. Generally any stated total would be doubled to arrive at a person’s income. My partner worked for an American/Italian film script writer. Every day she would travel out along the Via Apia to his country villa and write down everything he said. These performances were highly entertaining as he would burst into the room, changing parts as required with a full display of emotional interpretation, while changing gender as required. However our script writer earned the bulk of his income overseas and paid tax in that country . This was of no interest to the Italian tax authority, who claimed he would have to pay tax on the total amount no matter were it was earned. This could be arrived at by increasing his Italian income several fold to a figure considered satisfactory to the authority. He did very little work for Cinicita, one of Mussolini’s worthwhile contributions to 20th cent culture. Our script writer refused to pay the large amount arrived at and received a year’s jail sentence for his trouble.He could of course have paid a suitable amount of under table consideration, but he was a person integerity.
The Art Academy, I was attending also ran courses in film direction, opera, costume and stage design. Such people as Fellini taught there, so the course was very popular with students from all over the world. The Italian film industry at the time was at it's peak winning accolade internationally. Many of these foreign students obtained work as extras a few days a week in Italian westerns and gladiator films. The pay was very good as they would earn in a day what I was trying to live on for weeks. The Afro /Americans were always in demand for the gladiator films. A Scot’s friend of mine would discuss for hours on end how we could somehow break into this new highly lucrative business. We thought westerns would be best, but my Scot’s Glaswegian accent proved to be a major drawback. Unfortunately these students had similar tax problems to my script writer friend, corruption seems second nature to Italian life . When you realise that some 39% of the country’s GDP is related to Mafia controlled business, it is not surprising Italy has it’s current financial crises.
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