They can afford a yacht, but pay no tax

Italian police who raided a smart marina found it packed with shiny new yachts owned by people who had declared zero or almost no income, in the latest example of the country's brazen tax evasion.

Inspectors found a yacht worth euros 1.2?million (pounds 1?million) owned by a businessman who had never filed a tax return, when they did spot checks on the marina in the Adriatic port of Bari.

One vessel, worth an estimated euros 700,000 was the property of a company with a declared annual revenue of just euros 1,300.

Another, worth euros 120,000, was owned by a firm which claimed to be making euros 36,000 a year.

Officers from the Italian tax police checked the boats against the income declarations made by their owners, revealing tax evasion on a breathtaking scale.

They inspected 963 yachts and other vessels jostling for space in Bari's picturesque harbour and found that 286 had owners with suspiciously low tax returns, or no tax returns at all.

Most of the boats were of a substantial size - 755 were 30ft long or larger.

In a campaign which began just before Christmas, tax inspectors have concentrated on the upmarket ski resorts of Cortina d'Ampezzo, in the Dolomites, and Courmayeur, on the border with France, as well as the owners of top-of-the-range sports cars in Milan and Florence.

The checks are part of a concerted effort by the technocrat government of Mario Monti, the prime minister, to recover some of the billions of euros lost through tax evasion each year in an effort to whittle away the country's euros 1.9?trillion national debt.

Italy's black economy, which includes evasion of income tax and VAT, amounts to euros 275?billion a year, or 17.5 per cent of GDP, according to official figures.

Last year, only 72,000 Italians declared a gross annual income of more than euros 200,000 - representing less than two per cent of all taxpayers.

In Cortina d'Ampezzo, tax officials traced the owners of 133 Ferraris, Lamborghinis and other luxury cars and found that 42 of their owners - nearly a third - had declared incomes of less than euros 22,000 a year.