No need to pay tax. Just get a private plane…

It’s human nature that most people would probably prefer to pay less tax. To be honest though taxes need to be paid as without them the government wouldn’t be able to pay for, for example hospitals, schools, the police, infrastructure such as roads and if you’re in Italy then if taxes weren’t paid there wouldn’t be any private planes, parties and yachts for tax collectors.

Hang on a moment. What did that last sentence say?

“Private planes, parties and yachts”.

Yes, that’s right as earlier this week Italian police arrested Giuseppe Saggese, the head of Tributi Italia (Italy Taxes) and he has been accused of stealing some pretty significant amounts of money.

Tributi Italia is an agency based in Genoa that collects taxes for 400 town councils in Italy and as head of the agency Mr Saggese was no doubt earning a pretty good salary.

Unfortunately for the town councils (and in fact, unfortunately for Mr Saggese now that he’s been arrested) it looks like he was tempted to increase his “remuneration” from the job by some illegal methods.

Together with four colleagues Mr Saggese is accused of arranging for some of the taxes to be paid into the other bank accounts rather than the bank accounts of the town councils. The money was then used to pay for private planes, yachts, expensive cars and extravagant parties.

Even after Mr Saggese no doubt attended some pretty impressive parties on some private yachts this wasn’t enough to satisfy him as he is also alleged to have taken Euro 20 million in cash for his own use.

As I said at the start, it’s probably human nature to prefer to pay less tax and I should imagine that the residents of Genoa in Italy will be especially upset knowing that their taxes were spent on private planes and parties rather than hospitals and schools.