Zammit’s and Falzon’s income tax returns show mammoth tax evasion

Declared the equivalent of Eur4,192 as earnings from his architectural practice in 1986. He was a member of parliament at the time.

Michael Falzon: declared total earnings of Eur39,000 for the nine years between 1976 to 1985, the years when, he now claims, he deposited the equivalent of half a million euros in Swiss banks.

The story is in The Malta Independent’s print edition. Few journalists know (fortunately, I am one of them and was able to tip off the newspaper with which I work) that under the Income Tax Management Act – not the Press Act – the Speaker of the House is obliged to accede to a written request, specifically by the editor of a newspaper registered at law, for the income tax returns of any present or former member of parliament.

The Speaker is obliged to provide to the editor, after having demanded them from the Commissioner for Revenue, any income tax returns for the years in which the MP actually sat in parliament, for the one year after he or she left parliament and, if the politician failed to be returned to parliament in one general election but then was returned in the following general election, the income tax returns for the intervening years when he or she was out of parliament must also be made available to editors who request them.

If I were the registered editor of this site (I tried to have myself registered at the Department of Information for this specific purpose but was refused as the DOI does not have a vehicle for the registration of internet site editors) I would be going to town on the income tax returns of the most suspicious politicians, starting with Gozo Minister Anton Refalo.

I have never been able to understand why the press restricts itself to pooh-poohing his declaration to parliament, with his loan of almost a million euros and his stated income of 23,000 euros, when editors can obtain, directly from the Speaker who is obliged at law to accede to the request, Anton Refalo’s actual income tax returns for all the years he has been in parliament.

Had I been a registered editor, I would have done this long ago. I would also have obtained all of Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s income tax returns for the years he was in parliament and the year after he left parliament to see exactly what he is declaring to the tax man and why so many of his purchases are made in cash.

Some editor should do it. These are the real stories about our politicians. The law gives us in the press a major instrument for scrutiny and amazingly, not a single newspaper has used it before The Malta Independent’s ground-breaking first this morning.

Editors don’t know about it because it’s in the Income Tax Management Act and we in the press are trained to refer to the Press Act as the law which governs us. And politicians of all stripes find it convenient not to tell editors, while the political parties themselves, both of which have registered editors for their newspapers, seem to be operating a Cold War policy of not pressing the red button first in case neither of them survives the nuclear fall-out.

What a country. Truly incredible.