Finance Minister John Tria closes the door to a general moratorium on the reform of the CCBs. Responding to a question in the Senate Finance Committee, the number one of the Mef argues that following this path, as proposed by the League, "means abolishing the reform, it means eliminating a reform to which the vast majority" of the sector has adhered.
THE REFORM OF THE BCC
"A moratorium on the entire law", he added, is "complicated at the very least, it should be considered with a great sense of responsibility", also because the request, "doesn't seem to me to come from the majority of cooperative credit".
A clear No, which seems to extinguish the Carroccio's ambitions. Alberto Bagnai, Northern League president of the Finance commission of Palazzo Madama, has in fact put on the table the hypothesis of launching a moratorium until the European Union introduces a regulatory framework more favorable to smaller banks.
Tria, however, does not agree and underlines that: "If each government that alternates closes the previous reforms and opens others, the certainty of the law, the general system of law is severely tested".
We recall that, in 2016, the former Renzi government approved a law which provides for the approximately 300 cooperative credit banks to merge into three holding companies: Iccrea, Cassa Centrale Banca and the South Tyrolean Raiffeisen. The reform hypotheses arose just over a month ago when, during the reply to Deputies for the vote of confidence, the Premier Giuseppe Conte had announced the hypothesis of implementing "a review of the recent provisions on cooperative banks and cooperative credit".
FLAT TAX AND CITIZENSHIP INCOME
During the hearing before the Senate Finance Commission, Tria also announced the departure of the task force for the review of Irap and "to analyze the revenue profiles in view of the definition of the flat tax, in a coherent fiscal policy framework and in harmony with the constitutional principles of progressiveness that the current personal income tax system struggles to guarantee”.
The aim is to find a way to implement "structural actions strongly oriented towards making taxation more growth-friendly, improving tax compliance and preparing the ground for reducing the tax burden".
As regards the Basic income, the minister clarified that "it will be done by transforming existing social protection instruments into other instruments", then we will see "the differential cost and how to introduce it gradually".
Finally, a word on the fiscal peace: "It does not mean launching new amnesties but thinking of a taxman who is a friend of the taxpayer, who favors the repayment of debts". What needs to be done, according to Tria, is to move "from a state of fear towards the financial administration to legal certainty and trust, to change the relationship between the state and taxpayers by adopting as a guiding principle good faith and mutual collaboration between set off".
ECONOMIC GROWTH
The Italian economy shows "positive growth rates" but "at a slightly lower rate than the average for 2017" . For 2018, Tria underlines, "it still appears possible to achieve growth not far from that planned, even if the picture suggests a slowdown and a slight downward revision for the trend of exports and production". As regards next year however, international institutes indicate “a slowdown in the main European countries and this will also have an impact on the Italian economy”.
