The Revenue Agency, amnesty and hairy sermons
Gianfranco Polillo's comment
The denunciation of the "condonificio" by Ferruccio de Bortoli, from the pages today of the Corriere della Sera , is more than acceptable. Social discrimination is never welcome. And the one that divides the citizens who pay taxes from others is even more execrable. There is not only a problem of social justice and respect for democratic rules. But the fact is that if others don't pay, that deficit doesn't go away. And it is the honest ones who are forced to take charge of the lack of income from the Treasury.
Having said this, however, one cannot help but notice the dimension of the dysfunctions that de Bortoli himself points out. When we talk about 987 billion to be collected by the State, as indicated by Ernesto Maria Ruffini, the head of the Revenue Agency, in his hearing at the Chamber a few months ago, perhaps there is no knowledge of the size of the problem. There is talk of a figure that exceeds the total revenue for 2020 by 25 percent. It is as if the state coffers remained empty for a year and a quarter.
A problem, which has this dimension, does nothing but highlight the state of profound crisis in which the Italian tax system finds itself. Not only among the most expensive in Europe. Indeed the most expensive if we consider the poor quality of public services – both salable and indivisible ones – which should be the compendium of one of the highest fiscal pressures among OECD countries. But also the most uneven and not only because of a tax evasion which, well that goes, is equal to double the Eurozone average. But due to the scarce consideration that, in the system, the dimension of family income has.
We explain ourselves better. France has a higher tax burden than Italy. But in that case splitting works. The tax burden is divided among the members of the family. The more this is numerous, the less it affects. Of course you can disagree. For a country like Italy, subject to the collapse of the birth rate, as demonstrated by Corriere della sera , it would be inconsistent. But we don't insist. What is evident, however, is that elsewhere the tax system is not the sieve we have in our country.
In the 1970s, with the reform studied by Cosciani and carried out by Visentini, an extraordinary result was obtained, although not all those suggestions had been followed up. There was, however, a basic coherence between the tax system, which had as its basis the "withholding agent" and the personal income tax, as a benchmark capable of indicating the taxpayer's effective fiscal capacity. Even then, something escaped, but it was believed that the progress of Fordism, as the cornerstone of the productive organization, made activities not linked to the company dimension increasingly marginal. Which represented the outpost of the state vis-à-vis the taxpayer – dependent on the company.
The new technological development, especially since the beginning of the third millennium, has transformed this scenario. We are facing an increasingly liquid and changing society, which progressively reduces the relative weight of the corporate structure. And with it the certainty of an automatic tax levy, as it was previously. From this progressive misalignment, in the presence of an increasingly consistent tax burden, the holes could only increase. In the early 1980s, the tax burden was 33.6 per cent of GDP. (current US level). Against Italy's 43.05 percent in 2020. Hence the need for an overall rethinking, as suggested by Mario Draghi, increasingly criticized by leftists.
Why is this not advent so far? But for the simple fact that there is a legal and a material system. The legal one is designed by the legal norms. The material one from the discounts of the various tax exemptions. In 2019 (2018 income) they amounted to over 30 per cent of the total income from personal income tax. All in favor of incomes of less than 75 thousand euros, except for a percentage of about 5 percent. This explains why 87 per cent of taxpayers bear only 50 per cent of the total burden of the treasury, while the other half is borne by the wealthiest, who are, however, only 13 per cent of the entire stalls.
Is it a balanced system? To posterity – one might say – the arduous sentence. As far as we are concerned, only one prayer. We are obviously available for a peaceful confrontation, which leads to a system reform. That it maintains the necessary progressiveness – the true one nevertheless – but for the rest, please spare us the sermons. Especially if they are hairy, aimed above all at guaranteeing the identity feelings of a left that, as has often happened, preaches well, but scratches badly.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/lagenzia-delle-entrate-il-condono-e-le-prediche-pelose/ on Mon, 22 Mar 2021 15:40:31 +0000.