The new municipal tax on waste and services – the Tares – which came into force on 50 January this year in all Italian municipalities, could cost up to 360% more than the Tarsu for some categories of businesses. The bill will be higher for companies in the fruit and vegetable sector, bars, canteens and restaurants (about 158 companies). These are the activities that Presidential Decree 1999 of 20 - the so-called "Ronchi Law", still the regulatory reference for the calculation of Tares - identifies as those with the greatest "potentially polluting" content. Schools and nursing homes will also be penalised, with price increases between 50 and XNUMX% compared to what has been paid up to now with Tarsu, which until now had benefited from very low rates. On the other hand, the activities considered to have low producibility of waste will benefit from the redistribution of the tax burden, including cinemas, garages, exhibitors, banks, shops and industrial and artisanal activities.
The real difference compared to what has been paid so far, however, is linked to the application of the second component of the tax, the one that concerns indivisible municipal services - including public lighting, road and greenery maintenance, local police, etc... - which since January 1st are included in Tares. Since the municipalities will have the burden of covering 100% of the costs of the services provided with the amount collected by the new tax, depending on the management efficiency of which the individual municipality will be capable of the increase of this quota - which applies to the same way to all types of companies – may vary from a minimum of 2% up to a maximum of 15%. This is what emerges from a study carried out by Unioncamere on the expected impacts following the entry into force of the Tares for the business world.
"Tares is an important element in the implementation of fiscal federalism and must lead to a strong responsibility of local authorities for a more efficient management of resources and for greater transparency of tariffs" commented the President of Unioncamere, Ferruccio Dardanello. “The European logic according to which those who produce the most waste pay more must serve to move from a mere management of local tariffs to one in which tariffs become a lever capable of encouraging the most virtuous behaviors and penalizing, instead, those which are more harmful and less sustainable. To do this, however, requires a qualitative leap in the monitoring and management capabilities of the municipalities, so that more realistic and less presumptive criteria are identified with respect to the actual production of waste. In the situation we are in, any increase in costs for businesses risks worsening the prospects for recovery and threatening even more the stability of the territories and employment levels".
According to the study, the variations in expenditure due to the introduction of Tares will be rather differentiated in relation to the type of economic activity. With reference to the municipalities (just under 7 thousand) which on 1 January were still adopting the TARSU, the following table shows the impacts that on average may occur on businesses, deriving from the obligation to fully cover costs with the proceeds of the new tax and the consequent remodulation of the tax burden between economic activities.
As regards the impact of the consideration to cover the costs of the indivisible services of the municipalities, it will be differentiated between the various production activities on the basis of the current levels of taxation incurred: estimates range from approximately +2% for highly producible waste (restaurants, bars, fruit and vegetables which already pay higher fees) to 15% for some activities with low waste producibility (schools, garages, exhibitions which, on the contrary, currently pay low unit rates).
