Serie A, state gifts and bogus budgets
The sick football system demands a second public bailout just as the Turin prosecutor's investigation showed that half of Serie A was influenced by Juventus' accounting needs. The comment by Stefano Feltri, director of the newspaper Domani
The sick football system demands a second public bailout just as the Turin prosecutor's investigation showed that half of Serie A was influenced by Juventus' accounting needs.
During Covid, sports clubs obtained a freeze of 480 million euros in taxes due on players' salaries. To face a difficult moment, with the stadiums closed, but now they don't want to pay for it.
Claudio Lotito's Lazio, which is still paying the debts with the tax authorities of the Cragnotti management of twenty years ago, in the last balance sheet presented an increase in tax debts relating to the Irpef on employees for 54.9 million euros as of 30 June 2022, compared to 30.5 in 2021.
First the decree 104 of 2020 then the Aiuti ter decree of the Draghi government in 2022 have already provided for an installment of those debts. But the teams don't want or can't pay them.
And so Lotito himself, who is now also a senator of Forza Italia, is among the promoters of an amendment to the Aiuti quater decree which provides for a further installment payment, combined with a penal shield for companies. "It is not an ad personam law," claims Lotito in an interview with La Stampa. The beneficiaries would be many, but certainly he and his club are on the list.
Lotito, who is vice president of the Budget Committee, is not alone, there are also deputies from the Democratic Party and the Five Stars (later pentitii, withdrew their signatures) who ask for the same thing: an installment of up to 60 monthly installments, therefore five years, without penalties and without interest.
Basically a kind of state funding, which allows indebted companies to have resources that they would otherwise have to obtain from the banking system or the market at a very high price, given the fragility of their finances.
Access to five years, according to the teams, shouldn't even include the current 3 percent penalty. All free.
Juventus, which has just had to rewrite its 2021 financial statements after the disputes by Consob and the judiciary, have seen "tax debts for withholding taxes and others" rise from 47.9 to 65.7 million euros between 30 June 2021 and on June 30, 2022. At least 6.5 million taxes are frozen in the year of Covid.
Then there are the "payables for salaries due to employees and similar", which are another 31 million, and which include the results of the "salary maneuver" contested by the prosecutor, i.e. the players' waiver of some monthly wages which in reality, with parallel agreements , they were only deferred.
Furthermore, Juve also has other pending matters with the tax authorities because, the financial report always recalls, the company is being investigated on charges of having indicated "fictitious passive elements (with consequent unduly deducted VAT amounting to a total of €437 thousand), making use of invoices – issued (personally or through their own companies) by sports agents – referring in whole and/or in part to non-existent transactions".
"There is a willingness not to want to sweep the dust under the carpet and not to look the other way," said Sport Minister Andrea Abodi, regarding the investigation into Juventus, and hinted that it might not be the only club to have problems (in the reconstruction of the prosecutors in Turin, some partner teams of the player sales also benefited from the capital gains system).
But the further installment of tax debts proposed by Lotito and hoped for by the Lega Calcio, led by Lorenzo Casini, would really serve to keep the dust under the carpet for a few more years.
As well as the proposal, again via the Lotito amendment, to make contracts for television rights with a duration of five years instead of three: in this way the clubs could have their future cash flows anticipated immediately by the banks and postpone the confrontation with the harsh reality of increasingly less sustainable budgets.
ALL AGREE
Even Urbano Cairo, who controls Turin (but also Corriere della Sera, Gazzetta dello Sport and La7) agrees with Lotito: «Any person with common sense understands that it is a sacred opportunity for those who invest to obtain a profit thanks to the continuity of the project".
Among the few to do battle against the Serie A lobby is Matteo Renzi, senator of Italia Viva: “Instead of asking for installments at the expense of the taxpayer, football companies learn to manage their budgets well. And leave the money to those in need!”.
Because Renzi also wants to subsidize someone, but not Serie A teams, better those "that play sports with young people" or volunteers or culture.
Renzi's son Francesco plays in Serie D for Poggibonsi. But, for once, it is not Renzi who has a conflict of interest in this story but the Serie A accounting lobby which with transparent budgets and without state aid would be decimated.
(Excerpt from an article published in Domani , here the complete version)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/seria-a-i-regalini-di-stato-e-i-bilanci-fasulli/ on Sun, 25 Dec 2022 06:31:25 +0000.