Here are the real numbers on the Superbonus
Let's see what the real Superbonus numbers say. Giuseppe Liturri's in-depth analysis
When an instrument like the Superbonus is waved like a club for the purposes of political struggle, the first victim is the numbers. Taken at random, distorted, misinterpreted. Until it becomes an inextricable tangle that can be manipulated at will.
Let's start from the data provided in recent days by Enea updated in August which, for the Superbonus, shows an amount of deductions accrued for completed works equal to 76.1 billion (+1.9 billion compared to July) which rise to 93.5 billion if we also take into account the deductions expected at the end of the works. A significant slowdown compared to the monthly average of 3.5 billion last year.
These figures are very different – but are obviously at the basis of them – from the state requirement and the net balance to be financed, that is, the estimate of the sum that will be missing from the state coffers as taxpayers offset their credits over the years, and which therefore it will have to be found by issuing securities on the market and increasing public debt. Looking at all the construction bonuses, in April, this figure was once again revised upwards compared to the initial estimates and the Nadef of September 2022. We went from the initial 71 billion to 116 billion (of which 67 for the Superbonus), as many as 45 billions of increase in a few months, albeit distributed over several years, which casts serious doubt on the validity of the estimates of the State General Accounting Office (RGS). This amount is a forecast of how much taxpayers will compensate until 2035 (but 84% is expected by 2026) and the effect of not using other deductions, and is already fully in the public finance trends.
Since Sunday, to complete the confusion, large excerpts have been circulating from a " confidential note " by Ernesto Maria Ruffini, director of the Revenue Agency (AdE), addressed to Giorgia Meloni to warn her that " a landslide is hitting the public accounts and the the Italian economy ”.
In particular, on the pages of Corriere della Sera on Sunday we read that "between the end of March and the end of August, according to Ernesto Maria Ruffini's note to the Premier, the credits linked to the construction bonuses that were sold or discounted by the companies invoices grew from 110 to 147 billion. Of these, only 23 have already been compensated, leading to a reduction in the taxes owed. The other 123 billion, which can be discounted over a four-year period, are largely in the vain search for a buyer. The credits that the owners take directly as a tax deduction must be added to the account, another estimated twenty billion ".
These data, however, confuse part of the apples in a basket (the sales or discount on the invoice) with the entire basket (the financial requirement for the State) and are consequently contradictory to the figures reported in the parliamentary hearing by the managers of the Mef and of the Rgs just a few months ago .
In that Mef memorandum, it is also specified that – at the end of April 2023 – the transfers communicated to the AdE relating to all construction bonuses were equal to 65.6 billion, of which 15.2 had already been compensated starting from 2021.
Now, if these are the fixed points known at the end of April, since it is not possible that the credits sold have flown from 65.5 to 147 billion in a few months, it must be assumed that the 147 billion are a further upward revision of the certified requirement in April to 116 billion. To which "another twenty billion " should not be added at all as a share of the taxpayers who will directly deduct their credit in their declaration, as also claimed in the Corriere .
We would arrive at around 167 billion, which is a meaningless figure. It is reasonable to deduce that – precisely in anticipation of the imminent Nadef – the Mef technicians had to update the trends of the requirement and the net balance to be financed, bringing them from 116 in April to 147 in Ruffini's "note" in August. The latter must be subtracted from 13 billion in credits blocked due to fraud and 23 billion already paid. And we therefore reach the approximately 110 billion of residual needs, which the Undersecretary for the Economy Federico Freni spoke about. In any case, this is approximately 15 billion more in public debt, which also calls into question the deficit/GDP of 2023 (4.5%), for which the impact of the bonuses had been estimated at 0.7 points of GDP, and of the two-year period 2024-2025 (0.4 points).
But will this requirement actually be discharged on the state debt in the coming years, as a result of the compensations? It all remains to be proven. In fact, in April, compared to an estimated requirement of 116 billion, there were credits sold and offset in F24 for 66 billion, in addition to approximately 30 billion in problem loans (Ance estimate) and an unspecified sum that taxpayers will deduct directly in their declaration. The compensations amounted to approximately 23 billion until August, an increase in line with the 8.5 billion compensated in the first quarter. Since the requirement is an estimate, but transfers and compensations are a certain fact, there are two snags: it is not certain that all the credits transferred will be discharged as compensation, and it is very probable that, also due to the ban on transfers for works started after 16 February 2023, many clients at the end of the year find themselves in their hands with an annual quota of original credit that has not been transferred and cannot be offset due to the absence of tax debts, which from 1 January will be worth zero. To the delight of those who will be able to buy everything at rock-bottom prices. Yet another collateral damage of a measure that is theoretically valid, but which was poorly designed and managed worse with few precedents in the history of the Republic.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/ecco-i-veri-numeri-sul-superbonus/ on Thu, 14 Sep 2023 05:47:03 +0000.