Tax bills and the urgency of reforming the collection

Enrico Letta saved himself for a corner, but it was his team-mates who kicked the ball out. Even within the Pd, in fact, his proposal regarding the Fund financed by an additional levy of inheritance tax mortis causa to insure a bonus of 10 euros for eighteen-year-olds it was judged useful for its purposes (to help young people), while the modality indicated raised many doubts. Furthermore, it is certainly worth re-discussing the level of taxation of inheritances, albeit within the framework indicated by Mario Draghi in his speech on trust on February 17th: "In the case of the taxman, for example, we must not forget that the tax system it is a complex mechanism, whose parts are linked to each other. It's not a good idea to change taxes one at a time."

Then there is another issue to keep in mind: the tax was reduced at the time not (only) for reasons of social consensus, but above all because its revenue was so modest as not to deserve the organizational effort necessary to collect it, considering the many possibilities to evade this tax in a perfectly legal way. But stay in the air the idea of ​​a vindictive taxation of the humble, which does not respond, as it should, to a criterion of progressiveness, but to a sort of punishment for the rich (who too must cry) almost by virtue of an ethical principle (property tax, surcharge for companies which during the crises have increased their revenues, etc.).

Then there is always the mother of all the problems of the Bel Paese: a tax evasion of which everything is taken for granted: how much is the taxable amount and the tax evaded, who evades it, how is it possible, by what means. Everything is known, but only a modest amount can be collected – mind you – not of what escapes and continues to escape the tax authorities, but of what has been ascertained, quantified and transformed into tax assessments by the collection agencies. In the event of non-payment of taxes, the Revenue-Collection Agency (Ex Equitalia) can initiate an assessment procedure, which will be followed by a tax collection notice to be paid. If not even the tax bill is paid, the Collection Agent can act with one enforced tax collectioni.e. a forced procedure. The payment deadline for a tax bill is 60 days from the notification date. In other words, the Public Administration moves to have the payment of the unpaid taxes. Default interest is applied to the sums requested on a daily basis, calculated on the basis of the value of unpaid taxes, net of penalties. The collection of public credits not spontaneously paid by debtors presents serious difficulties for some time, which the repeated organizational and procedural revisions have certainly not remedied.

As can be seen from the data shown in the table below (published in the 2021 Report for the coordination of public finance of the Court of Auditors), twenty years later from enrollment in the role the percentage of collections is less than 30 percent of the net load. After ten years since enrollment the collections do not reach 15 per cent. As is well known, paragraph 4 of article 4 of decree no. 41 of 2021 (the first Sostegni decree) provided for the official cancellation of "individual loads" of a residual amount up to 5.000 euros entrusted to agents of the collection in the period 2000-2010, albeit limited to natural persons and other subjects with taxable income in 2019 up to 30 thousand euros. As recalled by the RCFP, the measure constitutes the third mass cancellation of uncollected registrations, after the one provided for by art. 4 of the decree-law n. 119 of 2018, which provided for the automatic cancellation of debts of a residual amount up to one thousand euros relating to individual loads entrusted to collection agents from 1 January 2000 to 31 December 2010 and the even earlier one provided for by art. 1 of the law n. 228 of 2012, which established the automatic cancellation of credits up to two thousand euros entered in the rolls made executive until 31 December 1999 (paragraph 527) and, for the generality of the rolls made executive on the same date, the abandonment of the activities under the responsibility of the Collection Agent with disapplication of the provisions concerning the discharge for bad debts provided for by articles 19 and 20 of Legislative Decree no. 112 of 1999 (paragraph 528).

In all the cases mentioned, including the last one, the usual political controversy has developed over more or less disguised pardons; while other parties attributed their initiative with having "reduced taxes", as an aid to taxpayers oppressed by the crises that repeat themselves, albeit in different forms, with a very significant frequency. Whatever was the actual reason for the cancellation, it is clear that its adoption should necessarily lead to a profound revision of the organizational and procedural model hitherto adopted for the enforced collection of public credits. On the occasion of the first Sostegni decree, a new fact must be recognized: the Prime Minister is not afraid of words. “Yes, it's a pardon”, Mario Draghi said at a press conference. The excerpt of the folders provides for a limited amount of 5.000 euros, which "corresponds to a net amount of about 2.500 euros between interest and various penalties". And this "allows the administration to pursue the fight against tax evasion even more efficiently". The norm will be limited to a small audience, under a certain income “and perhaps with less disposable income. It will have very very limited impacts.” Given the accumulation of files, continued the Prime Minister, "it is clear that the State has not worked and it is important that a small reform of the mechanisms for collecting and discharging the files be envisaged, the fact of accessing an amnesty today does not that would solve the problem."

La Court of Auditors he could not avoid observing and commenting on this rule. "Whatever the actual reason for the cancellation, it is clear that its adoption should necessarily involve a profound revision of the organizational and procedural model adopted so far for the compulsory collection of public credits". On the contrary – the Court points out in the RCF – in paragraph 10 of art. 4 it was established that the Minister of Economy and Finance, within 60 days of the entry into force of the decree (23 May 2021), is required to present to Parliament "for the consequent resolutions a report containing the criteria for proceeding with the revision of the control and discharge mechanism for uncollected claims".

"This provision - specifies the accounting judiciary - reveals the objective of realizing, both for outstanding loads and for future ones, an automatic discharge system of the uncollected quotas after the expiry of a certain period from their taking into account cargo, as well as a management methodology for entrusted cargo based on selective criteria". And indeed, as he wrote The messenger, “the government is thinking of changing the rules of collection, giving to the tax authorities 5 years to collect the sums due, at the end of which the unpaid tax bills would end up in the statute of limitations".

The goal is to increase the effectiveness of the bureaucratic machine. In fact, the Revenue Agency would still have to recover over one thousand billion euros in fines, taxes and unpaid contributions. But the Court of Auditors would not agree with such a solution. “This is an eventuality to be avoided – it is written in the RCFP – which would radically alter the tax management system based, as is known, on spontaneous compliance and in which the compulsory collection of the sums still owed constitutes an essential complement. If the adoption of selective criteria, in fact, can be considered physiological - continues the Report - to identify the positions to be subjected to (substantive) control, it does not appear compatible with the correct functioning of the system that the results of the automatic controls and of the substantial controls of the tax positions do not involve concrete and effective actions for their collection, whatever the amount of the same".