Think what you could do with $100 billion

Tax evasion is the largely untold part of the unravelling Eurozone project. Evasion is so endemic in Europe that paying income tax is largely a matter of personal conscience for many business people and self-employed professionals. This applies to many European countries, but especially so in Greece, Italy and Portugal, which, not coincidentally, suffer from extreme fiscal crises.

The situation is so extreme in Italy that the government has now started an advertising campaign to alert ordinary Italians about the true cost of tax evasion, measured in hospitals not being built, homes not being constructed, and failing public security.

Designed by advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, which famously designed the advertising campaign that brought Margaret Thatcher to power in 1979, the campaign uses big numbers to highlight the scale of the problem: think what YOU would do with €100 billion!

According to the BBC, tax evasion cost Italy $142 billion in 2010.