Maneuver, Court of Auditors: rules on cash and pos are not consistent with the Pnrr

The sudden stop on the use of cash and on the question of the ceiling on the use of the POS set at 60 euros comes from the Court of Auditors. These are rules, underlined the Court during the hearing to the budget commissions of the House and Senate on the budget law, which may “turn out to be inconsistent with the objective of combating tax evasion envisaged in the Pnrr”.
The 2023-25 ​​maneuver, however, confirms the positive orientations on public finance balances announced in the NaDEF. And the decision to keep the interventions envisaged for 2023 within limited margins with recourse to borrowing is positive, aiming, in the medium term, at reducing the budget balance within the 3% threshold and at a more rapid decline in debt than planned in the DEF. This is what emerges from the document that the Court of Auditors presented today in hearing to the Joint Budget Commissions of the Chamber and Senate, as part of the preliminary fact-finding activity for the examination of the 2023 Budget Law. Despite the limited time available , the accounting judges highlighted, interventions were prepared for significant amounts without recourse to a significant extent to new revenues (except for the measure on the extra profits of companies in the energy sector) and identifying lower expenses for considerable amounts. However, elements of uncertainty remain regarding the public finance framework modified by the maneuver. The intervention on energy costs, although of significant dimensions (over 20 billion in 2023), is destined to exhaust most of the effects in the first quarter of the year. In the event of a persistent increase in prices and despite the revenue that would derive from the taxation of excess profits, the size of the requirement is represented by the difference with the amounts used during 2022.
Pos and cash use
But it is on two specific points that the perplexities of the Court of Auditors arrive. Here’s what emerges from the document. “Some revenue measures raise some concerns. The good results of the last two years have made it possible to keep the public finances in balance, guaranteeing the sustainability of a redistribution process which has taken on significant dimensions. It is important to achieve significant improvements in terms of fiscal coherence, placing an effective action to contain tax evasion at the center of public objectives which, despite the results achieved, remains of considerable size”. As repeatedly underlined by the Court, the text specifies, “to do this it is necessary to make full use of the various prevention and contrast measures, which can contribute to raising the levels of fiscal loyalty, favouring, through the use of technologies, the spontaneous emergence of the taxable bases and supporting the necessary control action of the Tax Administration; this also through the systematic use of financial data and, last but not least, an effective collection activity. Some of the measures of the maneuver do not seem to go in this direction, which interrupt a process undertaken for the traceability of payments, which expand the area of ​​revenues subject to the flat-rate regime or which propose favorable regimes which, if they allow for an increase in immediate revenue , mortgage future income.
Pensions
“The revision of the pension indexation system, in addition to contributing to the coverage of some measures that anticipate a more comprehensive reorganization of the regulatory framework, ensures increasing resources over the forecast period: a choice which, if it leads to a perceptible reduction in the pension curve , goes to insert further elements of uncertainty in a system that is struggling to find a structure defined in an insurance sense and on whose redesign – which will be proposed – the sustainability of our debt depends to a significant extent”. This can be read in the document that the Court of Auditors filed in its hearing to the joint Budget Commissions of the House and Senate on the economic manoeuvre.
Basic income
The Court of Auditors then also expressed its opinion on the changes made by the government to the Citizenship Income. The distinction of ways of combating poverty and job inclusion in the basic income reform is “necessary” and “strongly acceptable”. The president of the Joint Sections coordination Enrico Flaccadoro specified that the Court, since the institutive decree, «has on the one hand underlined the importance of the introduction, also in Italy, of a universal instrument for the fight against poverty on the other, expressed perplexity regarding the effectiveness of an institute which, intending to respond both to the needs of contrasting social exclusion and of stimulating employment (active employment policies), carried the risk of tackling, with a single scheme, problems very different”.