What a silly idea the secretary of the Pd, Elly Schlein, to raise the spectre of the patrimonial a few months before the elections. As he explains once again Ferruccio De Bortoli in a masterly editorial on Corriere della Sera, “Wealth tax is the word that makes you lose.” Why? Because the wealth tax has three contraindications Insurmountable. The idea of greater fiscal justice is sound, but a wealth tax is not the way forward. First, we need to distinguish between assets: real estate and financial assets. A wealth tax on real estate already exists in Italy, called IMU. We must be extremely careful with personal assets, because truly large assets are mostly hidden in financial companies based in tax havens, and the risk of a new tax is that it will scare away savers, leaving them with nothing.
As De Bortoli aptly points out, beyond the difficulties of implementing it, the wealth tax—and this is the second drawback—risks both seeing large fortunes flee Italy and scaring small savers, who will remember it at the elections. The third drawback of the wealth tax is that it risks stirring up unnecessary controversy by accusing the left of demanding higher taxes, forgetting that, under the center-right government, the tax burden has already risen in recent years, and indeed has. The former prime minister and leader of Italia Viva is right. Matteo Renzi: "Schlein's is a tactical and strategic error." Instead of raising the spectre of a wealth tax, the secretary of the Democratic Party would do well to think about the wise words of the greatest standard-bearer of European social democracy, thatOlof palme who used to recommend: “The task of the left is not to make the rich cry, but to make the poor smile.”
