The 8 × 1000 turns 36. It was February 18, 1984 when the Italian government - chaired by Bettino Craxi - signed with the Holy See the agreement of Villa Madama, also called concordat bis, which renewed the Lateran pacts of Mussolini's memory (1929).
One of the issues to be addressed was the new way of financing the Church by the Republic afterwards the abolition of the so-called "congrua cheque" (a monthly disbursement guaranteed by the State to parish priests, which remained in force from the unification of Italy to 1986). The solutions found were two: the tax exemption of the offers and, in fact, the 8×1000, i.e. the distribution of a share of Irpef to the State or to religious denominations based on the choices expressed by taxpayers in their tax returns.
To benefit the Catholic Church, the distribution mechanism of the 8×1000 was conceived in a far from intuitive way, relying on the ignorance (and laziness) of taxpayers. In fact, the choice of the entity to which the contribution is to be allocated is not mandatory and many Italians think that by leaving the box empty the 8×1000 will automatically go to the State. But is not so.
The reason? Simple: the contributions of those who do not fill in the box are distributed in proportion to the choices made by those who have specified a beneficiary. This trick produces an abnormal distortion, because more than half of Italians do not specify in their tax returns which institution they want to finance, while the minority that indicates a recipient - and decides for everyone - chooses the Catholic Church in 8 out of 10 cases. Result: the 8×1000 of those who write nothing (i.e. the majority of taxpayers) 80% goes to the Vatican coffers, often without the knowledge of the citizens themselves.
Thanks to this expedient, the Holy See collects approximately one billion a year from the Italian state. If, on the other hand, the Catholic Church only received the money of those who indicated it as the recipient of the 8xmille, the flow of money would be reduced by more than half.
The Court of Auditors repeatedly denounced the lack of transparency on disbursements and the waste of resources on the part of the State, which "shows disinterest in the portion under its jurisdiction", giving the impression that "the institution is only aimed at acting as an apparent counterweight to the system of direct financing of confessions”. So far, politics has done nothing but ignore the problem.
