The much talk that is made of tax amnesty or social security, on real estate or on tax litigation, grave or non-grave, does not consider that on the basis of a sentence of the European Court of Justice of 2008, amnesties are simply prohibited. So it can't be done. And this regardless of the many considerations put forward in recent days by many opponents both on the morality of an operation of this kind which once again would end up favoring tax evaders, and on the convenience for the State which has often collected an apparently high figure in the past ( even if in many cases he was not even able to get paid all the sums due), but he had to spend much more, for example for the compulsory urbanization works once the illegal houses were accepted.
So a storm in a teacup. However, the problem remains of how to set up this development decree on the necessity of which everyone agrees, but whose content is for the moment a mysterious object. The political debate would certainly become more concrete if someone were to clarify that development does not only mean spending some public money to build infrastructure that has been planned for some time but never started due to lack of financial resources. The problem is more general: we need to restore competitiveness to the country system and to do this we need numerous coordinated interventions in order to reduce taxes on labor and companies, cut public spending not generically, but aiming to simplify the bureaucratic apparatus, decrease the weight of the state on the economy through privatization and liberalization. If, on the other hand, the path of further expanding public spending were chosen, this would in any case be negative and would be poorly digested by the markets, even if this did not occur with an increase in the deficit but with new taxes.
The money saved with spending cuts and with the pension reform should therefore be used to reduce the tax burden on those who pay all taxes and to help young people enter the labor market. In this context, what is an amnesty for? Sure, considering that the Government still doesn't know how to find the 20 billion provided for by the fiscal delegation, a little money would be useful. But this is a wrong way of dealing with problems. The first thing to do in this situation is to cut spending and the Government should not look for shortcuts to avoid addressing this issue.
In any case, the only form of amnesty possible and compatible with the hunt for waste-evaporation is not an amnesty but an extension of the current individual settlement already envisaged by the law in an automated mass settlement, made on the model of the one already launched in 94 by Dini government. This was explained by the Hon Maurizio Leo, an expert on tax matters who in 94 collaborated with the Ministry of Finance and is now a member of parliament for the PDL. "It is a question of mobilizing the financial administration to automatically elaborate on the basis of the information it already possesses today and which are inferred from the income meter or from sector studies, composition proposals to be sent to all those taxpayers for whom there are discrepancies between the various indicators, inviting them to adhere to the administration's calculations and perhaps offering a limited discount compared to what they would have to pay in the event of an assessment."
Today the assessment with adhesion already exists for individual positions and therefore this measure would only be a mass extension carried out with automatic and simplified systems, avoiding that the limited number of assessments that are carried out every year, leave the great mass of the undisturbed taxpayers. ” It is therefore not a question of a morally reprehensible maneuver such as amnesty. Furthermore - says Maurizio Leo - this encourages the emergence of income in view of the better future functioning of the income meter and sector studies, while still ensuring a new taxable base for the exchequer. This also integrates with the arrangement with creditors which exists in many other European countries and which the enabling law of last July already inserts into our legal system.”
Is this a useful and morally acceptable technique? It must be carefully evaluated in all technical aspects. One thing must be clear before opening the chapter of a new increase in tax revenues: it is the State that must guarantee the end of waste and patronage public spending. Otherwise, not only will the war between administration and taxpayers be destined to increase, but above all the international financial markets would remain skeptical of further drainage of resources from private individuals to the public sector. In short, our main problem would not be solved: that of credibility.
