Beauty is in the eye of the withholder

ROME (Reuters) - They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but an Italian minister who tried to argue that paying taxes is "bellissima" has found himself in a minority of one.

Economy Minister Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa's comments that "taxes are a beautiful thing" and "civilized" met a flood of derision Monday, in a country where evasion is so widespread that an estimated 13 percent of workers pay no taxes whatsoever.

Opposition newspaper Il Giornale said "the minister has gone mad" while economist Francesco Giavazzi asked whether "poor families" and wage earners shared the minister's enthusiasm.

Other members of the ruling center-left coalition, of which Padoa-Schioppa is a non-partisan member, were also unimpressed, with communist lawmaker Marco Rizzi saying: "If it's so good paying taxes, he should get his banker friends to pay up."

Padoa-Schioppa is a former European Central Bank member whose technocratic approach often clashes with the left of the ruling coalition. But his fight against tax evasion has yielded results and helped improve Italy's public finances this year.

With the media running straw polls Monday on whether the public agreed that taxes were beautiful, for Padoa-Schioppa's cabinet colleague Luigi Nicolais, the truth was more prosaic.

"No, they are not beautiful at all," said the public services minister. "Taxes are useful because without them we couldn't carry out any useful activities in society."