The ''Reading note'' of the Senate Budget Service commenting on Senate Act no. 1465 entitled ''Conversion into law of decree law no. 66, containing urgent measures for competitiveness and social justice', deserved more consideration ', better known as the Irpef decree because it contains the tax bonus in the paycheck which has become the workhorse of the Renzi government. The Budget Service of the Senate, like that of the Chamber, is an office called upon to express, with autonomy, authority and competence, an evaluation of the texts submitted for approval by the Commissions and the Assembly in order to favor a correct legislative procedure, providing elements of judgment to the parliamentarians. It is, therefore, an institutional function that helps politics without influencing its decisions. Making it clear, as happened by some sectors of the majority, that the observations on the IRPEF decree, especially as regards coverage, represent a sort of retaliation by the bureaucratic apparatus against the project to overrule the Senate is a dishonest and irresponsible attitude .
Trouble if in Renziano's "new course" the conviction that politics is allowed to do anything, regardless of any rule, takes hold. After all, this was the same behavior that Silvio Berlusconi was reproached for.
The Document, on the other hand, carries out a dutiful and timely examination of the provision, focusing in particular, as mentioned, on financial coverage and setting out various observations and requests for clarification that should not be underestimated, also in consideration of the expectations aroused by the promise of 80 euros and the significance politics attributed to this measure. Firstly, the cut of 5% of existing contracts for the supply of goods and services ended up in the sights of the technicians,
as a dispute of uncertain outcome could arise. As regards the revaluation of the Bank of Italy shares from 12% to 26%, in a single solution instead of the previous three installments, the Note assumes, in addition to the risk of unconstitutionality, an overestimation of any revenue. As for the increase, from 1 July, of the taxation of financial income from 20% to 26%, the budget office points out that it would also be necessary to estimate the substitution effect in the choices of savers, towards other more convenient goods, given that most of them do not suffer from the ''Tecoppa syndrome'' which induces us to stand still to allow the adversary to skewer us. As for the cut in Irap, there could be a greater loss of revenue than expected. Even with regard to recoveries from the fight against tax evasion, more precise indications on the tools and methods of intervention would be lacking.
Finally, even for the higher VAT revenue deriving from the payment of the debts of the public administration, there would be an inadequate consideration of the effects of the compensations. Basically, these concerns are gathered in a fundamental consideration and that is that, therefore, the rules that ensure greater revenues will be more reliable than those that propose reductions in expenditure. It will be said that, as always, there are, in the end, safeguard clauses which would in any case ensure coverage in the most direct and secure way: increases in taxation, perhaps in excise duties.
However, the Note suggests, in the final part, that this ''ultima ratio'' too is about to be precluded, because it has been abused for too long. ''With regard to the safeguard clause - it is written in the document - given that the activation of the guarantee envisaged therein must be activated in order to ensure the invariance of the revenue effects for the tax authorities accounted for only for 2014, it should be noted, as already pointed out on previous occasions, that the effectiveness of these clauses, prepared pursuant to article 17, paragraph 12, of the accounting law, through the envisaged increase in tax rates whose taxable base normally has a high degree of inelasticity, in addition to being subject to the issuing of appropriate administrative provisions, could prove to be fallacious in the light of the current economic phase and the resulting reduction in consumption. Such mechanisms could therefore have to deal with the problem of their partial effectiveness against the costs to be compensated''. In a nutshell, the Note (also taking up previous considerations of the Court of Auditors), claims that not only that the safeguard clause will have to be activated (which means that, according to the Note, the hedging measures will not work), but that also this activation could be inadequate.
''In this sense - the document continues - it must be registered, confirming the inherent problem of providing for a correct ex ante estimate of the feedback effects for the tax authorities, in terms of higher revenue in the VAT account, deriving from acceleration measures of payments by public administrations last year, the issuing of the decree of the Minister of Economy and Finance of 30 November 2013, activating the safeguard clause provided for by article 15, paragraph 3, of decree-law n. 102/2013 (so-called IMU Decree), to which were associated, among others, the effects of higher VAT revenue expected, in the same year, equal to 925 million euros with the observation of a revenue realized equal to only 540 million euros , for an amount equivalent to just 58,3 percent of that originally foreseen''.
If one wanted to explain with a joke what the Budget Office writes about it, it would be enough to say: ''Attention. With the safeguard clauses we have already given !''. But the government is about to step into another trap. On Wednesday 7 May, Minister Giuliano Poletti convened the social partners, the Ministry of Economy and INPS, because he intends to reopen the pension building site. The minister seems willing - according to his recent statements - to revisit the proposal of his predecessor Enrico Giovannini concerning the repayable loan for those who want or have to anticipate their pension treatment a few years before the accrual of the requirements.
But his interlocutors will ask to put the question of the ''exodus'' on the agenda (fortunately Matteo Renzi had not had this obsession until now) and to dismantle the strong point of the Fornero reform - the increase in the retirement age and the overcoming of the old-age pension – introducing the so-called flexible retirement. In this regard, in the Chamber, approved by the strong-willed Labor Commission, there is also a unified bipartisan text (if there is demagoguery to be done, no political force backs down) which the President Laura Boldrini insists on scheduling in the Chamber. The fact is that this measure, fully operational, it costs at least 20 billion. On the labor front, there is good news from the Senate where, in the XI Commission, the government and the majority reached an agreement on some corrective amendments to the text of the Poletti decree on fixed-term contracts and apprenticeships, passed by the Chamber. Greater concerns remain on the front of the European ''Work Guarantee'' programme: as many as 1 regions were still missing from the starting line on 13 May.
Five will be added shortly. Let us hope that, in the revision of Title V, these delays are remembered. That they are not the first and that they will not be the last either.
