  This paper explores a real-world fundamental theme under a data science
perspective. It specifically discusses whether fraud or manipulation can be
observed in and from municipality income tax size distributions, through their
aggregation from citizen fiscal reports. The study case pertains to official
data obtained from the Italian Ministry of Economics and Finance over the
period 2007-2011. All Italian (20) regions are considered. The considered data
science approach concretizes in the adoption of the Benford first digit law as
quantitative tool. Marked disparities are found, - for several regions, leading
to unexpected "conclusions". The most eye browsing regions are not the expected
ones according to classical imagination about Italy financial shadow matters.
