A precise economic and political logic can be recognized in the government’s proposal, which starts from the amnesty and arrives at the flat tax, for the benefit of only a minority of taxpayers
The tax amnesty will be done, albeit under a false name. It will begin its journey in the form of an amnesty for unpaid bills, below a certain threshold – one thousand euros, according to the rumors on the eve of the launch of the maneuver for 2023. Then the parliament will be able to intervene, most likely by widening the mesh. For now, launderers and organized crime remain excluded. But the direction is clear, and consistent.
Indeed, in the fiscal policy of the Meloni government, a precise economic and political logic can be found, which starts from the amnesty – and from the very fact of calling it a “fiscal truce”, even when the presence of a real war on the borders would suggest a more careful use of the words – and arrives at the flat tax.
The accounts only come back on paper
The economic logic, first of all. The ruling right is grappling with almost insoluble contradictions. The main one is between his electoral anti-Europeanism and the need to hold on to European aid programs. Once again, economic policy must move along the tracks dictated by international and European constraints, with narrow margins for maneuver and the need to find new funds to help the country deal with the deadly mix of recession and inflation. This leads the Meloni government, on the one hand, to implement all possible strategies to connote its identity in other fields, starting from that of immigration and the reduction of civil rights; on the other to look for spaces, in the economic maneuver, to recover funds, or at least pretend to do so.
Forms of amnesty for the sums owed to the tax authorities – from past tax assessments to new incentives to bring illegally exported capital back to Italy – can help make ends meet, at least on paper. It matters little that these revenues are uncertain, and above all that they are one-off, destined to disappear in the future or, worse, to create other holes by encouraging new evasion: the problems will emerge in the medium term, politics looks to the short term.
These are measures that do not affect the vast majority of taxpayers in the slightest
The political logic goes in the same direction. After all, the right won the elections thanks to the slogan “less taxes”, and its misunderstood interpretation. Many voted for it thinking of “less taxes for all”, while all the concrete proposals are aimed at benefiting a specific category of taxpayers and voters: those who have no income from employment.
Raising the ceiling on cash (removed from the last decree by the intervention of the President of the Republic, but promised in the stability law), enlargement of the number of self-employed workers subject to the 15 per cent flat tax, “fiscal peace” in its various forms. These are measures that do not affect the vast majority of taxpayers, workers and pensioners, who have withholding taxes at the end of the month: 34 million people, against the five million self-employed workers.
A gigantic historical problem
The latest official report on the unobserved economy (this is how the undeclared economy is defined) and on tax and social security evasion contains an estimate of the “tax gap”: in essence, the tax revenue that is missing due to evasion. For the aggregate formed by self-employed workers and businesses, the share of unpaid personal income tax is close to 70%. In absolute value: 27 billion and 600 million euros. 1.7 percent of GDP.
This is the gigantic and historic problem of the Italian economy. Problem that the right says it wants to address with the following recipe: if we lower taxes, evasion will also decrease. It is a pity that this hypothesis has proved to be fallacious in many cases in the past: for example, lowering the tax rate to 15 per cent if one is below a certain self-employment income leads to under-declaring one’s income to stay within those limits and pay less taxes. And that it will have highly unfair effects, especially now, if the area with a 15 percent “flat tax” rises to 85,000 euros a year: a medium-high income, on which an established professional will pay less tax than a worker.
Furthermore, the message counts: every measure of understanding and facilitation for those who have not paid taxes is, as well as an amnesty for the past, an indication for the future, encouraging even more illegal behavior. The economic model that one has in mind, in all of this, is that of a new boost from the “unobserved economy”, a possible future recovery driven by fragmented and often not very innovative small businesses, in many cases with no employees or with black employees – perhaps coming from the ranks of immigration forced into illegality by blocking legal entrances.
The world of self-employment and small individual businesses, often without employees, represents a strong social basis and constituent of the right’s identity. In numbers, it is important, but it is still a minority in the country. The mystery remains of the silence of the majority, and of that part of the 34 million taxpayers who voted to the right even if they will not enjoy the privileges of amnesties and flat taxes, on the contrary they will be damaged by the increase in public debt and foreseeable spending cuts social.