There is a measure which, although at the moment it is nothing more than an indiscretion, a small voice within the work in progress of the Growth Decree, is already causing discussion, and it is the hypothesis that the Government can make the use of the debit card is mandatory for all payments over 50 euros.
An obligation which, it is said, will not also be extended to consumers, but limited only to establishments which will all have the obligation to provide the possibility of payment by electronic money.
The obvious reasons for this measure lie in the ever unequal fight against tax evasion, as also explained by the Minister for Economic Development Corrado Passera, specifying however that the increase in the use of electronic money "must be tolerable in terms of costs and managed wisely in terms of timing".
From a fiscal point of view, in fact, the positive impact that such traceability of payments could have on tax evasion is evident, but, in the complex regulatory plan of pros and cons, the reverse side of the coin must also be clarified, on which inscribed problems of all kinds.
First of all ethics, why the further erosion of our privacy that such a measure would entail is evident, and then practical, given the difficulties that a part of the population, especially the older one, has with electronic payments. The main crux of the matter, however, as always happens (and even more so in a matter of wallets) remains the economic one.
There are the costs of equipping the machines to receive payments, for example, but above all bank commission costs, against which the outcry of Confesercenti has already arrived which, while saying it agrees on the implementation of the use of electronic money, speaks of "reduction of all the cost components borne by consumers and merchants, also activating the leverage of tax deductions”.
The modernization of a country also passes through the modernization of its payment systems, this is clear, and it is evident that every tool that can be functional in the fight against tax evasion, a real cancer, above all, of our economy, must be attempted, but there are still many, perhaps too many, pieces to put in order, in the question, before giving shape to a complete picture.
