The Fiamme Gialle of the Provincial Command of Treviso, as part of the customs and anti-fraud surveillance activity carried out at the “Antonio Canova” airport of Treviso, have identified 91 air carriers who, for the year 2023, have failed to pay the state tax due for air taxi flights, causing damage to the Treasury of 137,500 euros.
The object of the investigative attention is a “niche” of air transport, i.e. non-scheduled flights, carried out with aircraft attributable to rental companies, with a few dozen seats, usually used to have greater comfort and save time, avoiding delays, queues at boarding and baggage claim.
The “ghost” passengers were identified by the Fiamme Gialle of the Treviso Group who, after having acquired, from the handling companies active at the “Canova” airport, the declarations filed by the carriers used for the air taxi flights, crossed the data with the payments made to the State Accounting Office.
The airlines that did not pay the state tax were thus discovered, in order to offer more competitive prices to entrepreneurs and tourists. In addition to the evaded tax, penalties of around 41 thousand euros will now also be applied, equal to 30% of the evaded sums.
As many as 1,310 passengers passed through the Treviso airport, distributed across 395 air taxi flights, for which the tax was not paid which is equal to 100 euros for routes of less than 1,500 km or 200 euros in the case of longer routes, and must be paid, for each route with departure or arrival on the national territory, by the individual passenger who uses the transport service directly to the carrier, who in turn is obliged to pay it to the State.
These are foreign operators based in Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Romania, Serbia , Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, United States of America, Sweden, Switzerland, Hungary.
The inspection activity follows a similar one, concluded in the two-year period 2022-2023: following similar checks, the financiers of the Treviso Group had, in fact, identified another 162 air carriers which, in the tax period from 2017 to 2022 , had caused a shortfall in the state coffers of 267,340 euros, by not paying the state tax due to the transit, at the Treviso airport, of another 2,446 passengers, distributed over 718 air taxi flights.
