Self-employed professionals stage rally in central Rome
Max Civili
Press TV, Rome
About 5,000 small-business owners and self employed from across Italy gathered in central Rome's People Square to make their voices heard on their worsening living and working conditions.
Demonstrators from cities as far as Enna, in Sicily, 900 kilometres away by road, called on the 5SM-Democratic Party government coalition to introduce tax reliefs and better welfare standards for their category. There are over 5 million self-employed professionals in Italy accounting for almost one out of four workers nationwide.
Self-employed workers in Italy are made up by a very diverse group of professionals ranging from street vendors to lawyers and accountants. Workers labelled as self-employed earn from as little as 16,000 to 65,000 euros per year.
In a country where all attempts to tighten the tax system are always met with stiff resistance, self-employed and small entrepreneurs are often described as tax dodgers. The Treasury’s latest estimates show that tax evasion in Italy amounts to around 110 billion euros on average each year.
In December Italy’s parliament passed a resolution that will make companies such as Amazon, Facebook and Google pay tax on revenues they generate selling products and services to Italians. However making big digital companies pay their share of tax has become more complicated in the EU since US President Donald Trump has threatened retaliatory tariffs on European goods.
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