It is clear that Attilio Befera, great head of the Revenue Agency, and that is the tax collector head of the state, fell in love with modern marketing techniques, thus hoping to convince Italians to pay taxes spontaneously instead of always threatening terrible sanctions. After the strong but effective "commercial" on parasites of society, i.e. those who do not pay taxes, Befera has now launched a new message on TV which basically claims that paying taxes is convenient because in this way the state can provide services to citizens. Basically, he suggests the television commercial, the more taxes you pay and the more services the state can provide. And this is an ambiguous and wrong message both from the point of view of economic theory and from the current practice of the Italian case.
Let's be clear, the fight against evasion, which in Italy reaches truly monstrous levels, and which for too many years has been encouraged both with the regulatory jungle and, even more so, with operational practice, is sacrosanct from the point of view of fairness and also of the good functioning of the market, which is polluted by tax evaders. But it is not true that the more taxes you pay, the more services you will receive from the state.
In the first place, it is now clear that an overly intrusive State depresses economic activity and leaves citizens less freedom to turn to other service providers and, in general, to organize their lives according to choices deriving from their own preferences and tastes. In general it has been shown that where there is a high tax burden the drive towards development is reduced and that is society tends towards stagnation.
This in theory. If we then look at the reality of our country, the message of the commercial appears even more anachronistic. Everyone sees how the problem of services provided by the State is primarily a problem of efficiency, that is, of bad management, excess bureaucracy, waste, or worse, corruption and theft. More money to the public sector means, in this situation, feeding the hunger for power of politicians, who by creating ad hoc companies are always invading new fields by providing compulsory services even where private individuals could operate with lower costs and therefore with lower tariffs. And in fact the Monti Government has already laid the foundations for trying to thin out the jungle of local public services and has also solemnly declared that the proceeds from the fight against tax evasion will have to be destined for the reduction of the tax burden which by now, on those who actually pay all the taxes, far exceeds 50% of his income.
Of course, the tax question appears to be "the problem" among the problems of the Italian situation. It is intertwined with the necessary reform of the Public Administration, with the spending review, with the reduction of the privileges of the caste of politicians and high bureaucrats. However, while the spending review, i.e. the real reorganization of all the offices and functions of the State by eliminating all useless things, reviewing the bureaucratic functioning of the system, and perhaps enhancing what is actually lacking, seems to remain in the background of the action of the Government, just as nothing has been done to contain the costs of politics, the whole burden of reorganizing the public finances has been offloaded on the tax burden.
The Salva Italia decree was built almost entirely on taxes, apart from the important exception of the pension reform. Now a more general reform is being announced (envisaged by the enabling law of Tremonti) which should shift the burden of the taxman from direct to indirect taxes. For now, these are rumors, but it is worth emphasizing immediately that the shift, if it is to be effective in terms of stimulating development, cannot be zero-balanced. In other words, it is not possible to move only taxes from one chapter to another, ie from Irpef to VAT and the reduction of tax evasion. Surely this would be positive, but to really give a boost to the recovery of Italy's development it would also be necessary to reduce the tax burden by a robust cut in public spending. Which? The Court of Auditors indicated this a week ago: impose a reduction in the cost of public administration purchases and not just a containment of growth, disembark too many local government companies, sell an important part of state assets.
Monti is certainly well aware of these relationships between the tax authorities and growth. For now, Parliament is busy discussing the liberalization and simplification decrees, while it is urgent to conclude the negotiation on the reform of the labor market. But soon after will come the tax issue.
For the moment, among the few things that have leaked out, one arouses the greatest concern and that is the proposed introduction of the crime of "abuse of the law" and that is of laws, and therefore completely lawful, which however are used by companies or citizens, for the sole purpose of paying less taxes. The concept of abuse of law appears too vague and ambiguous to be able to give the certainties that so many international companies demand in order to consider investing in our country and to which even Italian citizens have aspired for some time.
Certainly Befera is looking for all possible tools to make taxes pay. But be careful not to lead to a sort of "dictatorship of the tax collector". This seems in total contradiction to the friendly face the IRS tries to show with TV commercials!
