The bonuses distributed by the government in 2020 were not enough to keep the tax burden under control, which in the last three months of last year rose to 52%, the highest since 2014. A significant leap despite the reduction in tax and contribution revenues and compared to 39.3% recorded in the previous quarter and an increase of 1.3 percentage points compared to the same period of 2019. On an annual basis, in the face of a drop in GDP due to Covid of 8.9%, the pressure overall tax amounted to 43.1% compared to 42.4% in 2019.
On the one hand, therefore, household income, consumption and purchasing power fall; on the other hand the tax burden, the deficit and the debt fly. The photograph taken by Istat leaves little room for interpretation and clearly shows how the economic crisis triggered by the global pandemic is far from being overcome.
In detail of the numbers, it is noted that after the slight signs of recovery linked to the summer, in the fourth quarter of 2020 the income decreased by 1.8% compared to the previous quarter. Consequently, purchasing power fell by 2.1%, pushing up the propensity to save of Italians.
The deficit exploded to 9.5% of GDP, bringing the public debt to 155.6%. “As in the first nine months of the year – reads the Istat bulletin -, the incidence of the public administration deficit on GDP has significantly increased in terms of trends due to the reduction in revenues and the substantial increase in expenditure, due to the income support for households and businesses “.