I have recently gone about opening a "Partita IVA" ( http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partita_IVA ) so I can act as an independant consultant here.  Like everything here, it's a pain in the neck, but opening it wasn't all that bad, compared to other close encounters of the bureaucratic kind that I've had.

When it came time to send out my first bill, of course I had to get the accountant to help me put it together (simply sending a bill with the amount to be paid would be way too easy).  The crowning touch, though, was that I had to go to the "tabaccheria" and purchase a 1.81 (one Euro, eight-one cents) "marca da bollo" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_revenue_stamp ) to affix to the aforementioned bill.  This is only necessary, however, in cases where the bill exceeds 77.47 (seventy-seven Euro, fourty-seven cents).  The end result was that between asking the accountant for help, going over to the store to get the stamp, and so on, I probably wasted in excess of a half an hour of my life for something that really isn't that complicated.

Who dreams this bullshit up, anyway?