Fiscal peace on the way also for the Church. The Government seems to have already found a solution to the bomb that exploded on 6 November following the judgment of the European Court of Justice which established that the Italian State must collect the unpaid ICI from the Vatican between 2006 and 2011, under penalty of opening an infringement procedure against our country.
ICI AND THE CHURCH: HERE'S THE WHOLE STORY
In 2006, various entities, including schools and B&Bs, had decided to contact the European Commission arguing that the exemption granted by the State by the Berlusconi government in 2005 (later modified in 2011 by the Monti Government) to religious schools, clinics, hotels and commercial managed by ecclesiastical bodies was illegitimate.
The exemption itself has also been criticized in the past by Papa Francesco: "A religious boarding school, being religious, is exempt from taxes, but if it works as a hotel it is right that it pays taxes", the Pontiff declared in an interview with Portuguese radio Renaissance.
However, in 2012 and 2016, first the EU Commission and then the EU Court established that it would have been impossible for Italy to recover the unpaid ICI by the Church "due to organizational difficulties" and existing calculations with respect to non-commercial entities, such as schools, clinics and hotels. Simply put: given that it was deemed impossible to calculate who should pay, how much and on what basis, according to the first-instance ruling, Italy should not have recovered those sums.
At this point the "Elementary and Montessori Nursery School" of Rome decided to appeal to the EU Court of Justice which instead considered that these circumstances constitute "Mere Internal Difficulties in Italy" and that therefore the sums must be recovered. The Luxembourg judges also underlined that the appellants were located "in the immediate vicinity of ecclesiastical or religious entities exercising similar activities" and therefore the ICI exemption placed them “in an unfavorable competitive situation (..) and distorted”.
The speech on the Imu is different. In this case the judges rejected the appeal and considered the exemptions established by the Monti government to be legitimate.
ICI AND THE CHURCH: THE TAX PEACE HYPOTHESIS TAKES PLACE
There are no precise figures, but according to some estimates by the Treasury Ministry, the sum not paid by the Church from 2006 to 2011 would amount to almost 5 billion euros, ie 800 million a year of unpaid taxes for 5 years.
The Italian state would be ready to ask the Vatican for 1 billion euros. Speaking in simple terms, Palazzo Chigi would be thinking of creating a mechanism similar to that envisaged in the Maneuver for normal taxpayers: a real fiscal peace which would provide for a discount of around 4 billion – but, we repeat, at the moment it is only a matter of estimates – in favor of the Church.
According to sources from the MEF, the Government could therefore decide to apply a flat rate of around 20% of the amount of the debt and fully cancel interest and penalties. The result would therefore be to collect about one billion euros, probably in installments.
A solution that some members of the League consider "common sense" and able to avoid the emergence of possible disputes, to be avoided, with the Church.
ICI AND THE CHURCH: THE WORDS OF THE CEI
For the CEI, the 4,8 billion to be paid so far estimated represent "an unrealistic figure". In an interview given to Sun 24 Hours, the secretary general of the CEI, bishop Stefano Russo, in fact underlines that “I absolutely do not feel like endorsing this figure. Among other things, it must be remembered, and done very clearly: the activities potentially involved are really many and range from school to health, from culture to assistance, and they are not all of the Church, but concern the whole non-profit world" .
The clergyman also partially denied the rumors circulated so far: What we read about possible repercussions are only hypotheses. I think we are really at an early stage on this,” says Russo.
I try to understand. Did the 5s oppose the amnesty for small tax evaders and would they approve the maxi amnesty for the Catholic Church? And why ever? Don't you doubt that it is unconstitutional? Then there is the aggravating factor, that the sums that the church owes are already in the hands of the state which passes it 1 billion a year of the 8 per thousand. Or does the seizure, moreover preventive, apply only to the League?