“The Italian authorities have been accused of resorting to police state-style tactics with the introduction of a new weapon to hunt down the nation’s many tax dodgers. The new procedure makes it possible to scrutinise any family’s spending pattern, and compare this with what it says it earns. But some commentators have been outraged by this month’s launch of what is called the Redditometro – the Income Meter. It has been described as unacceptably intrusive, the sort of thing that East Germany’s secret police might have dreamt up.”
