All the nonsense against the tax agreement
The government is carrying out one of the most serious attempts in recent history to induce 4.5 million taxpayers, who certainly do not stand out for fiscal loyalty, not to hide income. Giuseppe Liturri's analysis
“Concerted escape ”. Thus the front page headline of the newspaper La Repubblica on Friday 26 January. Which was echoed by Il Fatto Quotidiano on the same day with " the agreement to save tax evaders eliminates the 1.8 billion revenue ". To complete the chorus, again on Friday, the former Finance Minister Vincenzo Visco spoke on Il Sole 24 Ore to warn us that " the data on tax evasion risks losing representativeness" . In summary, Visco disputes the latest data which has revealed a decline in tax evasion which, according to him, is still around 100 billion.
Visco's argument – given that VAT evasion is decreasing – is to also attribute significant IRPEF evasion to taxpayers who pay the 15% flat rate. According to the former minister, these would have the same propensity to evade as other taxpayers (and why, if they pay much less?) and therefore evasion should also include what is missing by applying the full IRPEF rate to these subjects.
He talks about 30 billion or, considering the 15% paid, "only" 20 billion. You will understand why – faced with these unproven and manifestly disconnected from reality statements – Visco is not remembered as one of the best ministers to have occupied Quintino Sella's desk.
WHAT THE "Assessment" Legislative Decree REALLY PROVIDES
The cause of all this agitation was the approval in the Council of Ministers on Thursday 25 January of the definitive version of the "assessment" Legislative Decree, which will allow the biennial preventive arrangement for the incomes of smaller taxpayers.
We understand the confusion of the indignant in actual permanent service in the face of one of the most serious attempts in recent history to induce 4.5 million taxpayers, who certainly do not shine for fiscal loyalty, not to hide incomes, but not to the point of ignoring the essential elements of the government measure.
Which are two: even subjects with relatively low reliability indices are admitted to the two-year agreement with the Tax Office, and this has caused a scandal, in the presumption that this constitutes a gift. It's a shame that they completely neglected the second pillar provided for by the legislative decree, namely the absence of a percentage limit (in the initial drafts equal to 10%) on requests from the tax authorities.
In this way we want to attract the least reliable taxpayers to the new regime, who however must be ready to receive a proposal from the AdE consistent with all the data at its disposal and respecting the taxpayer's ability to pay. Otherwise goodbye reward regime.
WILL IT WORK?
Will it work? Nobody knows, which is why it made no sense to make any revenue forecasts.
Everything will depend on how the tax proposal is centered on the real income of the taxpayer who will thus be induced, in order not to find himself subject to intensified controls, to join and not risk worse damage.
We finally abandon the ideological totem of the analytical determination of the income of very small subjects, in the impossible claim of following them and intercept them "house by house", and we take the path of lump sum determination, based on robust indicators of contributory capacity which, if calibrated, they will increase the incentive to declare and pay. And only a person like Deputy Minister Maurizio Leo, at the forefront of these issues for over 30 years and one of the deepest experts in tax matters, could get there.
It is no coincidence that the experts were only able to comment in a similar way to what has been summarized thus far: " it is likely to hypothesize that the income proposed by the Revenue Agency to taxpayers with low reliability will be significantly higher than what was declared in the past by such subjects, in order to justify the application of the reward measures ".
These are the facts. For those who don't know what he's talking about, let's leave the chatter and the bombastic titles.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/evasione-dl-accertamento/ on Mon, 29 Jan 2024 08:36:16 +0000.