The Cuckold

For years, like temperamental lovers, Italy's government and Italy's taxpayers have systematically betrayed each other. The taxpayers seldom, if ever, declared more than a third of their true income for tax purposes. The government automatically taxed them for three times whatever they declared. The relationship was piquant and passionate, and altogether too unsettling for Finance Minister Ezio Vanoni.

Last year, urged on by hard-headed ECA advisors from the U.S., Vanoni ordained a new deal. It provided simply that everyone concerned trust each other and tell the truth. Two months ago, their past sins forgiven and forgotten in accordance with the new law, the taxpayers of Italy filled out the government's new 16-page tax returns and shipped them in.

Last week, without mentioning any names, Vanoni's ministry made public the results of the honor system: of 47 million Italians, only a million-odd admitted any taxable income at all; 730 admitted incomes over $16,000; only one lone Italian admitted making more than $320,000. His stated income: $704,000. "Which millionaire was it who told the truth?" asked one Milan newspaper, amid a nationwide chorus of cynical snorts and chuckles. With the persistence of Diogenes, newsmen finally identified the tower of honesty as Textile Manufacturer Gaetano Marzotto. Rome's // Tempo facetiously urged that statues "be erected to him and piazzas named in his honor."

But a single example of rectitude in a forest of deceit was not enough to soothe a treasury cuckolded once again for an estimated $1 billion of undeclared income. "We have succeeded in looking very silly," moaned one treasury official. With the sad air of a man once more calling a detective to watch his wife, Minister Vanoni promised a most thorough investigation.

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