The Game of Evasion & Playing for Evasion: a Contrasting Proposal for the Drowning Economy

The attitude of Italians towards games of chance increased dramatically in the last fifteen years thanks particularly to the introduction of new legal gambling and lotteries, run by the State, characterized by the simplicity and immediacy of the win. Among them, scratch and wins have become one of the most popular phenomenon in the Italian gambling realm and have increased the tendency towards risk of many consumers; the purchase of scratch cards has, nowadays, become almost complementary to people's weekly expenditure. This paper focuses on the tendency of the Italian citizens towards gambling, utilizing it as a tool for fighting tax evasion. In particular, evasion associated with the reduction of taxable income due to the omission of tax receipts on behalf of traders, craftsmen and self-employers. The idea is to replace fiscal receipts with scratch cards giving citizens the chance to participate in the local or national lotteries. Based on the successful experience in China - fighting tax evasion through lotteries - our paper discusses the possibility of putting an end to this sort of «mutual convenience » found on behalf of the abovementioned categories and customers; for the first time in the Italian tax system, instead of issuing fiscal receipts we would introduce elements of «potential conflict» between them able to increase the level of tax compliance.