The government has chosen the soft line with Brussels and in the next few hours will respond to the request for an adjustment of the accounts by 3,4 billion euros (0,2% of GDP). The problem is being able to raise these resources without increasing the tax burden, to avoid electoral backlash in the event of early voting. Therefore, some measures hypothesized by the Treasury technicians seem to have already been discarded, such as the increase in VAT, the reduction of deductions, deductions and tax breaks or the postponement of the cut in IRES.
Instead, other measures contained in the latest budget law could be postponed, starting with the Ape social, which should start in May and - according to the calculations of the State Accounting Office - will cost no less than 70 million a month. Therefore, postponing its entry into force by six months would save around 400 million.
Another chapter on which the Ministry of Economy is focusing is the tightening of anti-evasion measures, in particular the "split payment" and the "reverse charge", designed to bring out the VAT paid by the public administration. The second, the reverse charge, could also be extended to other sectors, such as large-scale distribution. Also possible is the extension to 2016 of the new round of voluntary disclosure and the extension of the terms for joining the scrapping of the Equitalia folders.
The problem is that interventions of this type, in addition to not being sufficient in themselves, do not bring certain revenues to be budgeted and for this reason they are traditionally not useful for reassuring Europe, which much prefers structural and detailed. The same goes for any new cuts in public spending, because those imposed during the year are considered scarcely credible by Brussels.
In short, making ends meet will not be a simple operation and Palazzo Chigi will try to take all the time possible. However, some political differences add up to the difficulties of accounting. Treasury Minister Pier Carlo Padoan – who met Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni yesterday to agree on answers to be sent to Brussels by tomorrow – is convinced that Italy must avoid conflict with the European Commission at all costs. From his point of view, the main objective is not to further depress the markets' confidence in our country, already severely tested by political instability, the Montepaschi case and the monstrous capital increase by Unicredit, whose outcome does not seem obvious.
On the contrary, Matteo Renzi is pressing for early elections in the spring, so he would prefer a new infringement procedure by Europe rather than signing any mini-maneuver that contains second thoughts on the latest budget law or, least of all, tightening tax. Indeed, "if after the elections we return to the government - wrote the former Premier yesterday - we will have to resume the reasoning starting from the cut of the Irpef".
