According to the latest data released by the Court of Auditors, the balance of tax collection in Italy continues to show alarming numbers. In 2024, €72.3 billion in evaded taxes were assessed, but of these the State managed to recover only 17.7%, about €12.8 billion. The rest, or nearly €60 billion, remains uncollected, placing a clear burden on public accounts. Yet politicians continue to cite the fight against evasion as the “hidden reserve” from which to fund new measures. However, the data tell a different reality: with a tax burden that has reached 42.6%, a public debt in excess of €3 trillion and a backlog of tax credits that exceeds €1.2 trillion, the prospect of turning the recovery of evasion into a structural resource seems unrealistic. The reasons for the failure are manifold. As accountant Giuliano Mandolesi, interviewed by Tgcom24, explains, four factors weigh more than others. First, high litigation: many taxpayers challenge tax assessments, slowing or blocking collection. Added to this is the so-called “amnesty culture”: the long tradition of amnesties and scrapping has fueled the expectation that, sooner or later, a rebate will come. There is also no shortage of cases of outright fraud, such as “open and close VAT accounts”, businesses created ad hoc to avoid paying and then disappear. Finally, the collection system itself is shown to be inadequate: the so-called “debt stock” is so vast that the administration focuses only on the easiest cases to resolve, leaving most of the amounts behind.