As part of efforts by the Italian Revenue Agency to increase the scrutiny of tax compliance reports by banks and other financial institutions containing statistics of transactions for 2012 were due to be submitted by March 31, 2014. The scrutiny of reports from third parties is one method of detecting under reporting by taxpayers and is one of the tools used to close the tax gap, which is very wide in Italy. Financial institutions in particular can provide the tax authorities with valuable information about the income and expenses of taxpayers. The details provided by the financial institutions will be used by the tax authorities to compile a list of persons who are high risk in terms of tax evasion. The information will be supplemented by examination of the spending and investing behavior of the individuals or companies compared to their tax returns.