“Cashback has a regressive nature and is intended to direct resources towards the categories and areas of the country in better economic conditions,” Prime Minister Mario Draghi said in the Council of Ministers, explaining his decision to suspend the measure. “The greatest concentration of alternative means to cash is registered among the inhabitants of the North and, more generally, of the large cities, with a householder under the age of 65, a medium-high income and a condition other than that of a worker or unemployed »The premier insisted, underlining that« even if no specific data exist to this day, it is presumable that these categories will benefit the most from Cashback and related bonuses and super-bonuses ».
Translated: the measure risks accentuating the inequality between incomes, favoring the richest families, with a presumably lower propensity to consume, causing a multiplicative effect on GDP that is not sufficiently significant compared to the cost of the measure.
Furthermore, according to Draghi, there is no evidence of the greater propensity to use electronic payments by the members of the program: «Almost 73 per cent of households already spend more than the ceiling envisaged by the provision through cards. Therefore, most could receive the maximum benefit even without stepping up their card use. On the other hand, it is unlikely that those without cards or currently using them for an amount lower than the ceiling will actually be able to reach it, because most of them cannot spend those amounts ».
According to the data cited by the premier, the families of the poorest fifth should increase their spending on cards by almost 40 percent, while the wealthiest ones by only 1 percent. Confirming these indications are the numbers relating to the transactions that have reached the objective set for the disbursement of the reimbursement (50 transactions in the semester): only 50% of the total transactions detected and approximately 40% of the beneficiaries have in any case carried out a number of transactions such as to suggest that these are people already accustomed to the use of electronic money.
Draghi also underlined how the onerousness of the measure, equal to 4.75 billion euros, must be assessed not only in relation to the expected benefits, but also the cost and the current economic and social framework, which saw – in 2020 – 335 thousand new families and over 1 million more people entering absolute poverty (Istat data).
Given the regressive effects, costs and application criticalities, as of today, significant effects on revenue cannot be estimated. On the contrary, electronic transactions are likely to grow as a result of Cashback, especially in sectors that are already low in evasion, such as large-scale distribution which, according to Istat, absorbs almost half of retail spending, rather than in critical ones.