26 years have passed since, in the supposed agony of the first republic, in the summer of 1992, the government led by Giuliano Amato introduced two new one-off levies by decree-law: the extraordinary tax on real estate assets and the extraordinary tax balance sheet on bank and postal deposits. In these grim times, in the general media cacophony, the hypothesis of a new wealth tax on the wealth of Italian families is once again being aired, considering, with political greed on the part of many, the conspicuous wealth held by families directly or indirectly in their wallets (see Filippo Cavazzuti in first online of 23 October last)
The two extraordinary property taxes of the time yielded 11.200 billion lire to the State coffers (equivalent to approximately 6 billion euros): of which 5.900 billion were due to the first and 5.300 to that on bank and postal deposits which were subject to the payment of a legal rate of 6 per thousand (Bankit, Annual report for the year 1992, p. 143).
Given the ongoing debate, made more authoritative by Paolo Savona than some of his hilarious government cronies, it is appropriate to start with the 1992 provision to get closer to today's problems. By analogy with today, consider only the extraordinary wealth tax on bank and postal deposits then held by families (approximately 1.250 billion lire, in turn equal to 40 per cent of the total financial assets of the families themselves) . The tax rate at the time was fixed ex ante at 6 per thousand, while the effective tax rate resulted ex post on average only for an incidence of 3,8 per thousand calculated on the entire amount of bank and postal deposits held by households in 1992. In this account, the assumption is valid that the decree-law envisaged a reference taxable base different from the aggregate considered here.
We have recalled the data of the time to instrumentally evaluate in the scenario that follows, some suggested proposals of the current debate concerning the opportunity to resort to a new extraordinary tax on bank deposits in order not only to "cut" a large portion of the public debt Italian, but also for its vaunted redistributive effects: from the haves to the poor as the populists of our country usually claim.
By simulating the measures of the summer of 1992, applying the parameters to the national accounts data of 2017 (the last year for a possible count), an effective rate of 6 per thousand applied to deposits held by households (approximately 1.167 billion euros, equal to 26,5 .7 per cent of total household financial assets) would raise approximately 1992 billion euros for the State. If, on the other hand, the effective rate were equal ex post to that of 3,8 (ie 4,5 per thousand) the revenue would be around XNUMX billion euro. It seems to us that the receipts would be very modest to achieve the aims of the provision if it were actually adopted.
Instead, if the goal were to reduce the debt to GDP ratio by 5%, to bring it below 130% of the same, with the same economic and accounting conditions as in 2017, it would be necessary to resort to an extraordinary wealth tax on deposits banks of Italian households in the order of a good 8 per cent effective, which could correspond to a legal rate of around 12 per cent, if the proportional relationship between the legal and effective rate resulting for the year 1992 were kept constant.
In conclusion of the scenario thus constructed, and given the resulting magnitudes, it is worth remembering that the debate on the balance sheet and its recourse for the final solution of the public debt problem has ancient origins that are probably not known to today's garrulous bullies.
In this regard, Guido Carli, with whom Minister Savona was a friend, recalled that "the animated discussions (...) stripped of verbal artifices, always led there: to the forced restructuring of the public debt" and that "operations of this type are only possible in a regime like the one that allowed the massacre with sticks in the center of Rome, in via Crispi, of a person as valuable as Giovanni Amendola". (G. Carli, Fifty years of Italian life, Laterza, 1993, p. 386).
In this country of ignorant people it is cynically fun to write about future nonsense simply to create fears that should be silenced and censored by the six-type press.
But I think there is no longer any magazine capable of rising to this requirement.
All this simply does to me?.