The middle class? A citrus fruit squeezed by taxes. The government, with the tax reform being launched, promises to correct the imbalances in the distribution of the tax burden. But the road, numbers in hand, appears really uphill.
In the third quarter of 2023, the tax burden in our country is decreasing compared to the third quarter of the previous year. This was revealed by Istat in the quarterly account of public administrations, explaining that the tax burden was equal to 41.2%, a reduction of 0.2 percentage points compared to the same period in 2022. Well, a small improvement, but only in theoretical line. Because if we then look at the Eurostat statistics and go into more detail, we discover, as mentioned, a much more bitter reality. In which the tax burden is distributed lopsidedly, excessively punishing certain income classes. Which ones, exactly? It’s easy to say: from the analysis of tax returns it emerges that 5 million Italians, with incomes exceeding 35 thousand euros gross (13% of the total) pay a total of 59.95% of the Irpef. A great imbalance. And again: examining the declarations starting from the highest income brackets, above 100 thousand euros, only 1.21% of taxpayers emerge who, however, pay 19.91% of the taxes. Adding to these taxpayers also those with gross incomes from 55,000 to 100 thousand euros (which are 1,385,974, 3.37% of the total, and pay 18.14% of the total taxes), we obtain that 4.58 % pays 38.05% of the Irpef. Finally, including incomes from 35 thousand to 55 thousand euros gross, it turns out, as mentioned, that 12.99% pays 59.95% of the personal income tax.
Out of 59.6 million citizens resident in Italy on 1 January 2020, 41 million filed a tax return in 2021 (with reference to the previous tax year). However, only 30.2 million residents paid at least 1 euro of Irpef, i.e. just over half of Italians: each taxpayer therefore corresponds to 1,448 inhabitants. 79.2% of Italians declare incomes of up to 29 thousand euros and correspond to only 27.57% of the entire Irpef, and therefore a tax not even sufficient to cover spending on the main welfare functions. In short, getting to the point, the tax statistics seem to disprove the false myth of widespread fiscal oppression that sees all citizens harassed by the tax authorities and penalized for excessive taxes. For example, just to pay for healthcare costs, for the first 2 income brackets up to 15 thousand euros, the difference between the Irpef paid and the cost of healthcare amounts to 51.817 billion; the difference rises to 58.2 billion when added together
incomes from 15 to 20 thousand euros. Also considering welfare and welfare spending by local authorities, the total redistribution is equal to 219 billion out of approximately 555 billion in revenue, net of social contributions. In practice, 40% of all revenues and almost 100% of direct taxes are redistributed, which totally benefits 58.06% of the population (corresponding to those who declare up to 20 thousand euros) and, in part, the remaining 28 .96% (corresponding to declarants between 20 and 35 thousand euros); little to nothing at 12.99% of paying people.