Many have seen the confinement at home and the temporary stoppage of a large part of productive activities such as the opportunity for nature's revenge on man. And the idea of an Earth less subjected to human action tickled our imagination.
However, beyond the substantial but very temporary reduction of emissions of CO2 in the atmosphere, the reality is different. And that concerns waste which, even in the strictest lockdown phase, have not stopped being produced and therefore managed, collected, recycled, disposed of or taken to landfill. Among other things, maintaining, almost everywhere in our country, a good level of effectiveness, with no case of rubbish accumulating on roadsides and sidewalks, as often happens in times of so-called "normality".
Therefore, waste management did not close due to pandemic and with it the costs of the service that weigh on families and businesses already in difficulty due to the stoppage of activities. And as happened with energy, reductions and tax payment solutions are also being studied for waste that do not further complicate the already delicate economic condition of these subjects. In the middle of May, the Authority, ARERA, intervened in favor of the poorest families and of those companies that had to temporarily stop their activities.
But we cannot forget two elements. First, that the TARI is a tax/tariff which serves to cover a service and not a social shock absorber designed to meet the difficulties of a certain segment of the population and, secondly, that the Authority is a regulation and control body which, therefore, does not have the power to decide at what what to allocate the taxes. This decidedly "political" choice must come from those responsible for governing the country.
And the need to implement decisive interventions in favor of the real economy is urgent. A few numbers to outline the current and future scenario, beyond what we have directly experienced in recent months: a 25% drop in household consumption, bonuses for self-employed workers, layoffs for a large portion of companies, economic maneuvers - outstanding finances. During this 2020, according to our estimates there will be a collapse of 8,3% of GDP, to a net debt of 6,3% of GDP, and to a growth of the debt/GDP ratio to 151,2%. The unemployment rate is expected to rise to 12,2%.
Next year a favorable “rebound” is expected, but it is not certain that it will be sufficient to recover the pre-COVID-19 values. We believe that, in 2021, unemployment will fall to 10,7%, a figure in any case higher than the 9,9% of 20191. We know that the shock caused at national and global level by the pandemic will not pass soon or in any case will leave important consequences on the economic and social life of nations, in general, but also on that of single individuals or families. Just by looking at the Istat data referring to 2018, therefore well before the spread of the virus, we discover that 36% of Italian families were among the economically fragile subjects, i.e. unable to meet any unexpected expenses. Today, things have become more complicated: in this delicate phase, the step to overcome the so-called "poverty threshold" is even shorter.
So going back to waste management, the objective difficulty of paying taxes by weaker or weakened subjects can only generate consequent cash problems for Municipalities and managers. For example, the latter have shown how difficult it is to compress or reduce expenses in the space of a few months as their structure is rigid, with a high incidence of fixed costs (80-90%, 40-50% relating to personnel ). Not to mention the 15% reduction in receipts recorded in the first months of the emergency.
The Municipalities, in turn, have taken steps to ask for payment extensions, installments or postponement of deadlines. In addition to explicit requests for discounts connected to the suspension of the service and lower disposal costs and the possibility of taking into account the lower costs starting from the 2020 tariffs. To this end, the Association of Municipalities, ANCI, has tried to include these initiatives tax reduction as part of expenses related to the COVID-19 emergency, so that they could be financed with an increase in the public deficit.
As already mentioned, ARERA (Resolution 158/2020 of 5 May) has imagined a tariff reduction for non-domestic users (activities forced to close by decree), indicating the criteria for a reduction of the variable portion of the tariff calculated in proportion to the days of closure. However, the reduction is not automatic for non-domestic users who have voluntarily closed and will be calculated on the reduction in waste production. In both cases, the Municipalities will determine its application through the service managers.
For families in difficulty, however, ARERA has thought of a facilitation that in the attribution criteria follows the measures already envisaged in March with the electricity and gas bonuses. From the remodulation envisaged in the ARERA provision, they can be hypothesized three different possible calculation scenarios; the revenue concerned is between 251 and 664 million euros, depending on the degree of discretion that the local authorities want to use. Whichever scenario will be the most plausible two are the facts, unfortunately, for sure.
1. On the one hand delay in payment and the total or partial failure to collect taxes put the waste system in serious difficulty. If the situation were to worsen – further closure and subsequent worsening of the crisis – the continuity of the service itself cannot be excluded.
2. On the other hand, the crisis generated by the pandemic has further aggravated the growing share of people close to the poverty line present in our country, at least since the crisis of 2008. Already in past years that one third of Italian families considered "poor" struggled to pay bills and taxes regularly, including TARI. To understand: if before the emergency, waste expenditure recorded a shortfall of 1,8 billion euros in the municipal coffers, today these values are destined to rise and well exceed 3 billion euros.
It is therefore clear that the size and criticality of such a situation go beyond the "simple" problem of the tariff or reduction of the single tax. It calls into question the need for an alliance between local authorities and service operators, and between the latter and the Government. An alliance to support families in difficulty and businesses in their recovery with the Social Bonus, concentrating the relief intervention on the truly deserving categories and subjects, and at the same time contrasting opportunistic behaviour. Because the acceptance of requests will only be possible if selectively, not for everyone. Unfortunately, the resources allocated to date in the DL relaunch do not seem to be sufficient.
Curated by Andrea Ballabio, Donato Berardi, Samir Traini and Nicolò Valle
