A new fiscal framework for Italy

Our country needs true and radical tax reform, a kind of revolution that will create a new balance... between the state and its taxpayers.

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Salini fiscal status

by Rossano Salini |

Nn the articulated and complex relationship between the state and the citizen, one of the elements that usually, in public opinion and in the ensuing debate, tips the scales of "morality" towards the former to the total detriment of the latter is the vexed quaestio of tax evasion. Reduced to very simple terms, the argument that goes around is: "If everyone paid taxes, the state would have the money it lacks to make services really efficient in our country". Those who try to counter this view, instead, oppose the reasoning, as plausible as difficult to prove, that tax evasion could be reduced if taxes were lowered, that is reducing the cause of the incriminated phenomenon.

Waste in the Public Administration

The question should instead be addressed from a different point of view. We are helped in this regard by an important document published by the always active and worthy Cgia of Mestre. The document, with the significant title "Waste in the PA is worth twice as much as tax evasion", highlights the fact that "contrary to popular belief, in the "give-and-take" relationship between the State and the Italian taxpayer, it is certainly the latter who loses out, from a strictly economic point of view". As the editors of the document correctly warn, the calculation of the waste of the PA is difficult to quantify in rigorous statistical terms; however, this does not mean that, gathering data from authoritative and verifiable sources, the calculation that emerges is that of 110 billion per year of tax evasion (estimate of the Ministry of Economy and Finance), against a total waste that amounts to approximately 200 billion.

The tax revolution

Our country needs real and radical tax reform. So radical that it should be, in essence, a sort of revolution. No one denies that the costs of politics must be kept adequately under control; much less does anyone deny that the fight against tax evasion must be carried out with rigour and without discounts. Given the need to reduce to a minimum what is done in violation of the law, the main problem is to ensure that no violation is carried out under the aegis of the law. And this is what regularly happens with the waste of citizens' money by the state. This is why working for a radical change in the fiscal structure of our country, for example by effectively linking the taxes paid to the use of certain services, should become the real priority. Against the current scheme, where the taxpayers' money is indiscriminately thrown into the cauldron of the Treasury and taken from there to be used in a way that is totally free from any control and rigor, it would be better to create an effective tax-service relationship: the money remains in the citizen's pocket, and is used only when the service is requested and used. All this without prejudice, of course, to an equalization quota that allows everyone, even those who do not have economic means, to use essential and indispensable services. This would be a reform capable of radically changing Italy, as well as creating a new balance in the balance that today sees the State behaving towards taxpayers with an arbitrariness that at times, more than in a modern democratic and liberal state, recalls the times of the absolute power of monarchs.


The full article is published in Issue 4 of Elettronica AV

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