Bonus or penalty? That’s the problem. Because faced with the multiplication of dozens of measures to support families, businesses and individual citizens, a doubt arises: it is not that these measures have a negative effectcreate distortions, or perhaps fuel a ad marketing which correspond to modest advantages?
The latest arrival is the column bonuses: those who want to install a home wallbox to recharge their electric car can request a refund equal to 80% of the cost, up to 1,500 euros for private individuals and 8 thousand for condominiums. Shortly before, the contribution for the rent of separated or divorced parents with dependent children had started, up to 6 thousand euros a year. Stands out in the background bill bonus: for families with ISEE up to 25 thousand euros, excluded from the ordinary social bonus, it can translate into a discount on the electricity bill alone of up to around 60 euros. The contribution is voluntary, depends on the participation of the energy seller and on the amount of consumption. There is also a second intervention, to be distinguished from the first: in 2026, those who already received the electricity social bonus automatically had an extraordinary contribution of 115 euros.
The aid jungle and the infinite catalog of measures
The transport bonus could arrive next year, in the form of a sum to be used to buy tickets and passes for various local public transport services. And then there are the newborn bonus, the sports dowry for children, the one for household appliances and for the psychologist and, among the most curious items, the help for the care of pets intended for over 65s with low ISEE. Just to cite a few examples caught in a sea of measurements. Yes, because in Italy politics continues to churn out a barrage of support. And no one knows exactly how many there are. There isn’t one unambiguous administrative definition of “bonuses”: under the same label are checks, deductions, tax credits, exemptions, vouchers, tariff discounts, non-repayable contributions and even guarantee funds.
The most reliable compass remains Incentivi.gov.itthe public catalog of Ministry of Enterprisewhich collects measures for citizens, businesses and institutions. An August calculation counted 5,773 aids in total, of which 802 were active; a July survey stopped at just over 700 open measures out of 5,579. The plausible number today, therefore, fluctuates between 700 and 800, but it largely concerns tenders and incentives for economic activities, not just aid for families. If we narrow our gaze only to national bonuses for families and consumers, we are in the order of 30-50 measures, depending on how social bonuses, INPS benefits, tax breaks and sectoral discounts are counted. An archipelago dispersed between Inps, Revenue Agency, Areraministries and local administrations, which in its fragmentation already says a lot: the bonuses, however criticized, remain considered politically profitable.
The illusion of the end of subsidies and the temptation of consensus
The good thing is that in the 2022 electoral programme Brothers of Italy it promised to replace the “short-sighted bonus policy” with stable and lasting measures. In the speech for trust, Giorgia Meloni he invited the room to “finally archive the logic of bonuses”. Clear words, almost a manifesto. Yet, according to the census of Political report cardin almost four years the government has introduced around 30 supports, exemptions, discounts and temporary concessions: on average one every two months.
The explanation is less ideological than it seems, and it is also the most realistic: executives don’t like bonuses when they have to finance them, but they really like them when they have to use them. They are quick to announce, easy to register, immediately visible to the citizen and, at least on paper, reversible. Tax reform requires years of mediation; a one-off contribution enters a decree and produces a newspaper headline the next day.
A structural plan for transport, energy efficiency or birth rate is complex to explain and even more difficult to implement. A bonus of 200 or 1,000 euros, however, is immediately understandable, almost elementary. And above all it allows you to help a specific category without committing the State to permanent expenditure, that is, without writing a check that will last more than one legislature. This is also why the bonus has become a kind of unit of measurement of politics contemporary: it does not require grand narratives, has a recognizable audience and offers a communicable result.
The economists’ verdict between targeted aid and universal traps
If they are well designed, they are also appreciated by economists. Let’s take help against expensive energy. The International Monetary Fund recommends that supports be temporary, targeted at vulnerable families and possibly delivered as direct transfersnot as general subsidies on the price of energy or fuel.
The logic is simple: if you lower excise duties, VAT or tariffs, you end up helping even those who don’t need it, you spend a lot of public money and the price signal that should push you to consume less is attenuated. Bank of Italyin a work on energy shocks, reaches similar conclusions: transfers to vulnerable families support income without distorting relative prices too much, while generalized cuts in energy taxes spread the benefit across the entire income scale, including those who would not need it.
The high price of energy remains a problem, but the universal discount risks transforming public intervention into aid even for those who could absorb the price increase without reducing other essential expenses. This is a decisive point. Targeted bonuses can work when they address a specific problem: energy poverty, loss of income, insufficient access to worthy goods, initial costs that are too high for investments that are also useful to the community. In these cases a selective incentive, automatic or in any case easy to obtain, can protect those who are more fragile or correct what economists call a “market failure”: a situation in which, left to itself, the market would not produce an efficient outcome. This is the case, for example, of social bonuses on the bill orSingle check.
According to theParliamentary Budget Officethe new allowance strengthened redistribution and increased the disposable income of the majority of families who benefited from it; the Bank of Italy has in turn noted a contribution to the reduction of inequality, above all thanks to the more progressive component of the support.
The short circuit of prices and the risk of punitive measures
The problem arises when the bonus becomes too generous, too general, too disconnected from the income of those who benefit from it. The Super bonus this is the case at school: the Bank of Italy recognizes that the building incentives have triggered additional investments, but also estimates that around a quarter of the subsidized spending financed works that would have been carried out anyway, bonus or no bonus. Not only that: another study by Via Nazionale concluded that the Superbonus would have explained about half of theincrease in construction costs of homes between September 2021 and December 2023. The mechanics are almost banal, once explained: when the State reimburses more or less everything, the consumer has less interest in negotiating the price of the works, and the market finds more room to raise them. The IMF was also clear on this point: building incentives supported growth, but they weighed heavily on public finances and should be made less generous and more concentrated on low-income households.
The problem, therefore, is not to incentivize energy efficiency or the redevelopment of buildings. It is to do it in such a way as not to transform an environmental and industrial policy into a huge transfer of public money towards inflated prices, rents and jobs that would have been carried out anyway.
The general lesson, in the end, is less ideological than the anti-subsidy vulgate suggests. Bonuses are not a “malus”. They are tools: useful if limited, regressive or distorting if distributed like a rain. They work best when they are temporary, selective, simple to request and evaluate; they work worse when they replace real reforms or eliminate all spending responsibility on the part of the beneficiary. And here we are at the final paradox. After years spent evoking the end of the “bonus logic”, politics has found itself with such a large arsenal of aid that it can even be used in reverse, as a punitive rather than rewarding lever. In Legnago, after some serious episodes of juvenile petty crime, the mayor Paolo Longhi has proposed removing municipal contributions and non-essential benefits from the families of minors who commit crime, if the parents do not collaborate with social services. The bonus, born as a support tool, would thus be transformed into its exact opposite: no longer an incentive to do something, but a threat to not do something else. «Maranza bonus»? No thank you.
