Budding doctors all over Italy are furious with the Monti government. In the crosshairs of young white coats there is an amendment to bill on tax simplification, already approved in the Senate, which requires the payment of personal income tax also to those receiving scholarships. Today the the House Finance Committee has canceled the law, but the last word has not yet been said. In particular, the new tax could affect sums exceeding 11.500 euros a year. From this detail it is clear why doctors should be the category most disadvantaged by the provision, which is also extended to doctoral students of all university faculties.
"Unfortunately we are not allowed to call a real strike - Walter Mazzucco, president of the Sigm (Italian Secretariat for young doctors) told FIRSTonline - but today and tomorrow we will abstain from welfare and training activities in protest. Tomorrow there will also be a sit-in in front of Montecitorio. And we will be many: between 4 and 500 people will arrive from both Florence and Naples. In all, we should reach about two thousand demonstrators”.
The dispute is radical: “We criticize the very principle that research training can be taxed simply to raise cash – continued Mazzucco -. Even if we are in a period of crisis, we should invest more in young people”.
After graduating and specializing in Hygiene in Palermo, Mazzucco continued his education in the United States, to then obtain a master's degree and a doctorate at the Catholic University of Rome. Today she earns 1.100 euros net per month. Together with his colleagues, he will be before Parliament tomorrow so that “that amendment is at least revised, if not completely cancelled. With the introduction of the tax we would be equal to employees, but we have to decide: either we train or we work”.
How much money are we talking about? Mazzucco explains that “doctors with a specialist training contract, treated up to now to scholarship holders and therefore exempt from Irpef, have a gross salary of around 1700 euros per month, from which, however, not only the contributions to be paid to Enpam (the National Insurance and Assistance Body for Doctors, ed), but also the taxes to be paid to the Medical Association and the University must be subtracted. The net figure varies a lot. At Gemelli, where I come from, it was 1.500 euros”. Even the eventual Personal income tax “it would vary from region to region, but it should fluctuate around 100 euros. An important cost for those who perhaps also have children to support”. Furthermore, the State “could not in any case obtain large sums from this levy. So what's the point?"
The protest of these days is also an opportunity to bring out a not new anger. "I went around the Roman universities - continued the president of the Sigm - and we all agree on one thing: it is unacceptable that we resort to a new taxation and we cannot question the rights of the generations that preceded us . Some of our colleagues also receive 8 or 10 thousand euros a month in pension just because they lived in a context different from ours".
