Taxation is the lifeblood of any economy. Fulfillment of the most basic duties of government would be impossible without tax revenues. Non-payment of taxes has an immediate impact on the ability of the state to provide basic services to citizens, such as education, health, and development and maintenance of infrastructure. The failure of the state to levy and collect taxes can represent a significant obstacle to the entrenching, upholding, and enforcing of fundamental human rights, leaving the impoverished to bear the greatest burdens. Not surprisingly, tax policy can serve as a battleground in the contestation over political authority. Moreover, concerted and orchestrated attempts to undermine the tax system through the operation of fiscal corruption may impede a state’s ability to fulfill its duties to provide basic services or ensure certain human rights thresholds.Not only is the notion of fiscal corruption much overlooked within the contemporary literature addressing tax crimes and corruption, but it simultaneously struggles to find a home within political policy and enforcement mechanisms. Those with appropriate authority frequently fail to address fiscal corruption coherently and instead focus on either tax crimes or corruption as independent functions, failing to consider the nexus at which these phenomena meet. Thus, responses are framed in a manner which attempts to address either aggressive tax avoidance, tax crimes, or corruption as autonomous behaviors without recognition of the inherent interconnections and influences they have upon each other.To contribute to this discussion, this article, which builds inter alia upon the research which the authors have carried out within the VIRTEU project, first addresses the notion of fiscal corruption. After providing a grounding in tax avoidance, tax evasion, and corruption as independent concepts, the article then establishes the integrated notion of fiscal corruption, which is explored within the modern Italian tax system through the fiscal corruption rules applicable to the Guardia di Finanza. Subsequently, the article examines the use of the Milan Model which has the potential to serve as a blueprint for other tax enforcement systems seeking to identify and recover revenue lost through fiscal corruption
