After so many words (and as many promises), the prospect of a tax reform today seems to find greater substance. But as to its real extent, some doubts still persist. The Pnrr, the National Recovery and Resilience Plan indicates the contours of the interventions in tax matters. It does so on the assumption that the tax reform represents one of the key actions to remedy the weaknesses of the economic system and considers it an integral part of the path to be taken to start the recovery of the country. In the background, Europe’s usual recommendations: lighten the tax burden on labor, reduce tax expenditures, reform cadastral values, fight tax evasion.
There are six fiscal interventions to which the Pnrr explicitly refers: the IRPEF reform; the fight against tax evasion, with the enhancement of the operations of the Revenue Agency and new tools such as artificial intelligence, text mining and relationship analysis; the hope, not a real commitment, for a single tax text, to be then merged into a tax code; the reform of tax justice (on which an inter-ministerial commission is already working); changes to collection, especially for difficult-to-collect loans (based on Legislative Decree 41/21, the Ministry of Economy must indicate to Parliament, by 7 August, the criteria to be followed); fiscal federalism to be completed.
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Question: are these interventions sufficient or is it still too little?
Many observers had glimpsed, especially in the days close to the inauguration of the Mario Draghi government, the possibility (perhaps the hope …) of starting a more ambitious path on the tax authorities than the IRPEF reform. At the same stage, however, others had well perceived that – within such a heterogeneous majority and with oppositions that seem to be gradually accentuating – the idea of a common path to rearrange the tax authorities would have been illusory. Perhaps also because the Fisco contributes to define the sphere of identity of the parties – think of how many times the electoral rounds have been won thanks to the tax promises of the parties themselves – for which, therefore, compromising, giving up pieces of their beliefs becomes complex. We will see, to stay at the IRPEF, the barricades when you have to choose between rates, flat tax and German-style algorithms or the cross-resistances when it comes to putting your hand to the cut in tax expenses.
Now, it is clear to everyone that the personal tax reform is indispensable. Irpef is the main tax of the system, it concerns the vast majority of citizens. On the other hand, reforming the personal income tax means thinking about many relevant aspects of the tax system, from the taxation of self-employment to the multitude of substitute taxes to local taxation.