This church is not a hotel. Or rather, this hotel is not a church. And so it is right that you pay the dear old ICI, which has now become Imu. With an amendment to liberalization decree, the Government will correct a long-standing Italian distortion, requiring the Holy See to pay taxes on buildings used for commercial purposes. But not only. Perhaps the most important point is what it plans to also cancel the exemption on all those so-called "mixed" structures, i.e. "not used exclusively for commercial purposes". Basically, until today it was sufficient that in the hotels, schools or clinics of the Church there was a chapel or a small cloister dedicated to prayer for the entire property to be considered untouchable by the tax authorities. A not negligible detail, established with the Prodi-Bersani decree of 2006. Now the project is to exempt the Church only for those "fractions of units" in which no commercial activities are carried out, making them pay the IMU on everything else.
In short, a real tax revolution, if you think that the Church has 20% of the entire Italian real estate assets in its pocket (for a value of approximately 9 billion euros). The amendment was announced yesterday by Prime Minister Mario Monti in a letter to the Vice-President and Competition Commissioner of the European Commission, Joaquin Almunia. The choice of stage is not accidental: in October 2010 the EU (after an appeal by the Radicals) started yet another infringement procedure against our country for state aid, precisely in relation to the favorable treatment that we have been reserving for the Holy See for years. It is easy to predict that the change of course will be appreciated by Brussels, but the sentence could come anyway (perhaps even within two months), with the attached obligation to recover all the money not collected.
But even before relations with Europe, the executive must worry about safeguarding those with St. Peter's. And in this case the theater of the meeting is even more solemn than the cold halls of Strasbourg: today almost the entire Monti government, in the company of President Giorgio Napolitano, will travel at Palazzo Borromeo, seat of the Italian embassy to the Holy See, none other than for the 83rd anniversary of the Lateran Pacts. A good opportunity to talk about taxes. Meanwhile, the assembly of bishops, the CEI, remains cautious: she expects to "know the exact wording of the text" before expressing a judgement. But Cardinal Bagnasco, president of the Conference, providentially eased the tension. Knowing very well that the ICI-Church dossier has been on the table of the executive for some time now, Eminence of him had already said he was ready to welcome "every intervention with the utmost attention and sense of responsibility". And today he limits himself to asking that "the social value of the vast world of no-profit be recognized and taken into account".
Let's get to the numbers. How much is the holy amendment worth? Difficult to say precisely, but according to (highly conservative) estimates by the Municipalities we would be talking about something like 700 million euros a year. According to the Catholic newspaper Avvenire, there would be only 100. However, the ANCI maintains that currently less than 10% of those who should pay are paying. We will know more when the Government finally gives life to the Lateran Imu.
