The Chamber of Deputies today approved the delegate tax. There were 309 votes in favour, 99 abstentions, no votes against. In reality, it is not a question of a mandate for a true reform of the tax system, since it does not intervene on the fundamental assumptions of the tax system or on the taxes that characterize it. However, it foresees such a myriad of revision and rationalization interventions of the current system, that the Government finds itself empowered to carry out a very deep maintenance work and almost complete updating of all aspects of the tax rules. Far too vast, one might say.
In fact, the complete implementation of the many powers conferred by law on the Government would require a gigantic work of drafting the delegated norms. So much so that it is doubtful that the Executive is capable of carrying it out, and certainly not within the very short time allowed by the delegation law.
How many legislative decrees should there be? Maybe a few dozen, even, but it will depend on the choices that the Government will make when drafting them, since it will be able to organize the rules into more or less provisions. The materials, however, are endless. In following the structure of the delegation law, the following can be seen: revision of the cadastre; estimation and monitoring of tax evasion; monitoring and reorganization of provisions on tax erosion; regulation of abuse of law and tax avoidance; tax risk management, corporate governance, mentoring, installment payment of tax debts and review of rulings; simplification; review of the sanction system; strengthening of the cognitive and control activity; review of tax litigation and the collection of local authorities; review of the taxation of business and self-employment income and of income subject to separate taxation; provision of flat-rate schemes for smaller taxpayers; rationalization of the determination of business income and net production; rationalization of value added tax and other indirect taxes; energy and environmental taxation; public games.
The Government has only twelve months from the entry into force of the law to issue this mass of implementing legislative decrees. But the first of these decrees, whatever it is, will have to be presented as a proposal within four months - according to what is expressly provided for - i.e. presumably within the next month of July.
Moreover, the twelve months available to the Government are further restricted, since the procedure for the formation of legislative decrees requires the opinion of the competent parliamentary commissions on the outlines of the proposed measures. Basically, to respect the timing of the procedure, the Government will have only 10 and a half months to present the outlines of the implementing decrees.
Aware of the enormous effort required of the Executive, the Chambers have envisaged a procedure for monitoring the Government's activity. Within two months of the entry into force of the delegation law, and then every four months, the Executive will have to report to the parliamentary commissions on the state of implementation of the delegations and, therefore, on the progress of the drafting of the delegated decrees.
The implementation of the powers will not be able to produce benefits with regard to the overall amount of tax levies. The interventions must be "zero balance", i.e. not lead to revenue losses. From the implementation of the delegations – it is written in the law – “no new or greater burdens on public finances or an increase in the overall tax burden on taxpayers must arise”. This means that the possibility for the Government to increase some levies is not excluded, provided that it simultaneously reduces others.
To give ourselves a better picture, the law concludes with a statement which, for the hopes of our economy suffocated by taxes, ends up being almost irritating: the law "pursues the objective of reducing the tax burden", but through " economic growth". In other words, hoping for an increase in gross domestic product to reduce the ratio between tax revenues, which remains unchanged, and GDP.
