Letta, Einaudi and inheritance tax
The speech by Corrado Sforza Fogliani, president of Assopopolari
The proposal of the Hon. Enrico Letta to aggravate, for certain assets , the tax on inheritance and donations, has reopened the debate on the subject in the country and not even the dry affirmation of Prime Minister Mario Draghi that "this is not the time to take money from citizens, but to give them ”, was able to soothe him. The supporters of the tax, then, have repeatedly invoked the authority of Luigi Einaudi, portraying him as in favor, tout court. But the statesman's thought cannot be derived from cut-off sentences, extrapolated from the context of pages and pages. In particular, one cannot understand him without knowing the conception that he had of equality at the starting points, a conception which – which he also reiterated in his inauguration speech for the presidency of the Republic (1948) – was a constant in his life.
A fugitive in Switzerland from fascism, Einaudi – therefore – wrote about it in Basel-Geneva-Lausanne between the end of September 1943 and 10 December 1944 (shortly thereafter, as is known, the Bonomi government would have called him back to Rome to assign him the office of Governor of the Bank of Italy, from which – much more than as Vice President of the Council of Ministers for the Liberals – he led the miracle of reconstruction). And his concept – of equality in the starting points – is not a vindictive, much less vindictive or redistributive concept, nor in favor of the tax authorities (as it had been for Augustus who had instituted it in 4 AD, immediately raising the opposition of Pliny the Younger, who wrote about it in the Panegyric to Trajan). It is a conception that instead fits into the vision that Einaudi had of the "builder family", builder of development.
(Those who want) – he wrote, significantly, among other things from exile – "to build for eternity, have a conception of equality in the starting points much higher than those who would like the race to restart for everyone at every generation ", continuing as follows:" The inheritance tax can and must effectively oblige the heirs, in a few generations, to remake, with their own effort, the material capital of machines, buildings, stocks handed down by the ancestor, as well as it can and he must intervene to oblige the current owner of a fund to buy back the land with his own savings as his ancestor had given it to his father ”. The name, the tradition, the experience – he added – "are the wealth of the family, which, kept in it, benefits others and, apart from it, remains destroyed with universal damage".
Not for nothing, in 1927 (therefore, already after the tax was abolished, in 23, by the fascist minister De Stefano for the heirs in a straight line), Einaudi had developed in the magazine Riforma sociale a "further criticism" of the tax project of succession (immediate upon the death of the deceased, therefore of a substantially expropriation type) of Eugenio Rigano, instead declaring himself favorable (still in 1946) only to a third generation tax, as we have seen, perhaps in the variant of payment of a one third of the tax on the death of the deceased, another third on that of the heir grandchildren (or grandchildren) and another third on the disappearance of the great-grandchildren. All this, on the firm principle (precisely to promote general economic and social developments) that inheritances must not constitute a privilege for those who have done nothing ("of those who are content to enjoy the inherited fortune in idleness"), and why, indeed, they thus remain in the property "only of the heirs who deserve it".
But is not this – it is, at this point, to ask – what is already happening to us? Do you know, today, any heir who does not dedicate himself to what he inherited, be it an industrial, commercial or agricultural entrepreneur? Isn't it common to already consider it a heroism to be able to keep the inherited fortune? Consider, then, what has already been said, more than 25 years ago (2 BvR 552/91, 22.6.1995), by the German Constitutional Court: "The inheritance tax finds its limit in the guarantee of the right to inherit, of which also includes the principles of testamentary freedom and the right of relatives to inherit. This tax cannot therefore nullify or invalidate the meaning and function of the inheritance right, leaving the property owned by a person to be lost upon death. The inheritance tax finds a further constitutional limit in the protection of marriage and the family sanctioned by the Constitution ”. Moreover, it is known that even our Constitutional Court (Pres. Cartabia), just last year, declared the current taxation compliant with the Constitution and, in particular, with the rights of the family (art. 129) and with business continuity. . This is why it is believed that the supporters of the aggravation of the inheritance tax cannot, and should not, have their intent. Not even mentioning Einaudi.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/letta-einaudi-e-imposta-di-successione/ on Sat, 19 Jun 2021 05:37:27 +0000.