Next week the Council of Ministers is expected to pass the enabling law on housing
UDINE. The Friulians, it is well known, have always had the mal dal modon, in the sense that they consider the home more than just a place to live, eat and sleep. So much so that practically all families are in possession of a residential property.
But there are also many who have a second home, by the sea or in the mountains. Or they invest in the brick, securing a monthly income thanks to rents. It is therefore clear that, if we talk about the reform of the land registry, the remodeling of the IMU, the variations in the census areas, all of them raise their antennas.
Prime Minister Mario Draghi, in his latest press conference, announced that the reform, however, will take place. The delegation text should arrive on the table of the Council of Ministers next week. But Draghi himself has announced what the guidelines will be. Ensuring that no one will pay more than today. However, there is no shortage of skeptics, precisely on the fact that taxes will not increase.
The hypotheses of reform
We will start from the probably profound revision of the cadastral estimates. The goal is to bring out the so-called ghost properties, that is, those that are not stacked but actually exist: in the whole country it is estimated that there are at least 1.2 million, but in our region the phenomenon is very limited compared to the excesses of other territories.
From the point of view of taxes, according to the government, nothing will change. The value of the properties for tax purposes will be determined through a new subdivision into areas or census zones of the municipalities that will be divided and divided into many more areas than today.
In Milan, for example, we will go from 3 to 41 zones, Rome from 7 to 233. Priority will be given to the indication of the surface of the residential properties in square meters and no longer in rooms and the subdivision of the properties into ordinary and special ones. In short, if a house today has only 4 rooms but has an area of 120 square meters, it is logical that the tax payment mechanism will be different than today.
Leaving things as they are for those who are now registered and pay regularly seems complicated. It will in fact be necessary to revise the IMU rates downwards: at current levels (0.76% the reference rate, 1.14% the maximum) it would inevitably lead to an exorbitant increase in taxes. The change in classification will lead to a change in the definition of luxury property and to include many more houses than the current ones. In short, a substantial package of rules, which will have to pass through Parliament’s scrutiny.
Scalettaris (Confedilizia)
The regional president of Confedilizia, the lawyer Paolo Scalettaris, is perplexed. «The idea of the reform of the land registry, of the revision of values, is something that, compared to the problems concerning the tax authorities, would be the last thing to do – explains Scalettaris -. First comes an obvious situation of suffering that comes from the fact that taxes are too high. Then there is a problem of simplification, of rationalization, of fiscal discipline. Finally, there is also the need to find solutions that reduce tax evasion. We are the first to recognize it, the current structure of the cadastre is not up to date, it is not entirely rational, it presents aspects of non-compliance with current events. For some time there has been a push from the EU towards Italy to increase property taxation. The reform would certainly lead to an increase in taxation, but this would hinder the growth of the country. A chain would increase the rents, the owners would be in difficulty in carrying out maintenance on the property, it is all a matter that must take into account an overall perspective. Adjusting the estimates to reality would not be wrong, but instead we will reach the completely wrong goal of raising taxes and in any case it is a very complicated operation that would require years and years of work ».
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