Luca Venturini’s Blog

If, in this image, you see only a fountain, then this post is for you.

Blogs contain news that change quickly. How can you follow the contains of a blog? If you browse the blog web site every day just to see if something has changed, you’ll waste a lot of time. It would be beautiful to have a method of being informed only when something on the blog changes. Still better would be to read only the news, always in the same format.

This method exists.

Some programs called aggregators, or news feed readers, enable you to follow blogs and other news sources. I use Akregator. Others use Firefox’s live bookmark, and still others prefer Google Reader. Even with little differences, the main point is that those tools permit the reader to be informed only when I change something; then you don’t need to waste your time to click on my blog only to see if I posted something. A list of aggregators can be found following this orange symbol here on the right. Be prepared to see that symbol everywhere because, where it is, there is a news source.

Trust me, using an aggregator is mandatory. Your possibilities will be multiplied more than with any other tool. Today 1 out of 3 of the visits to the most important blogs are through news feed readers.

But all this can still sound difficult to some people. Then, with the help of Feedburner, you can subscribe to this blog even via email. Just insert your email address in the box here at the right. You will receive a confirmation request from emaildefuego. By accepting, you will be subscribed and will receive all my posts in your mailbox. It’s really easy.

Photo credit: Orin Optiglot, Padday

This year the Italian government asked for a mandatory document in which each company should produce a list of its customer and vendors.

In some ways, I’m a little optimist and I hope that something can change. Then this kind of artists of bureaucracy finds something new that surprises me. So today, the Italian government can find the data about the IVA tax in the following documents:

• periodical (quarterly and monthly) reports I send during the year,
• annual IVA tax report I must send by January 20,
• list of customers and vendors to be given by april 29,
• IVA report to be sent by the end of october.

The IVA tax balance is always the same, but some bureaucrat wants to see the same balance four times. Each time the report is different, so you have to study how to fill out four different reports during the year.

Next Sunday is the deadline for one of these reports. Sunday? Yes, correct. In Italy, everything is closed on Sunday, but this deadline is on Sunday.

Someone says that the report should be prepared and sent online. There should be software for this, but nobody knows where it is or how to download it. I’ve found an accountant forum where the accountants and bookkeepers are asking each other what to do about the problem.

Then I went to the Agenzia delle Entrate site. It is the Italian government agency for taxes. There is nothing about this deadline. No software, no words about the deadline, just nothing. I tried to search the site, but I found nothing. If you call you can wait on the line 4 or 5 hours.

Online, one can find a lot of myths about this report and this deadline. Someone says that you have to ask your customers and your vendors if you can disclose their names to the Italian government. Others are asking why should you ask them and what to do if they do not give you the agreement that you can divulge their name. Others say that your customers must say yes to this agreement to divulge their name to the goverment. But why should I ask for permission if they must agree to it? It is something like a big game with all the Italians playing it. Those laws are written by someone that never worked in the business.

Then I’ve found a document like this. It states that the privacy agency is working on the law that enforces the ability to divulge the list of customers and vendors in order to understand if there is a privacy violation. Privacy? By the government? What are they saying? On that document I found that the deadline is changed: October 15.

In Italy, people work up to July for the government and from July up to December for themself. But you have to add to this balance up to 15 days to understand what they want from you during the year. In the meantime, nobody can work in Italy. Is it a problem? Not for them. Welcome to Banana Republic.

Photo Credit: Argento_Vivo