Greater attention to the middle class, fairer taxation and no discounts for those who try to be clever. These are the key elements of the conference on tax reform in the Chamber which took stock of the work done by the government and the next steps.
We are talking about a reform that is proceeding at a rapid pace, if we consider that the approval of the enabling law took place in August 2023 and that from December until today, 10 decrees have been approved, eight of which are definitive (decree on biennial preliminary agreed assessment, collaborative compliance decree, tax litigation decree, tax compliance simplification decree, taxpayer statute modification decree, IRPEF decree, gaming decree and international taxation decree) and two preliminarily (decree on the revision of the tax penalty system and the decree on the reorganization of the system of collection). To these will be added 10 single texts in which the various legislative sources of the tax system will be harmonized and regrouped, to bring order to the various scattered texts that currently contain the tax rules. These materials will be put out for consultation to ensure that all those involved can make contributions and will then be brought to the approval of the CDM and will go through their parliamentary process to be approved before the summer.
The government's ambition is to build “a fairer and more responsible tax system”, explains Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who reiterates how “there is no room for those who want to be smart, but those who are honest and in difficulty deserve to be helped and to be able to pay what they owe”. A reform that inevitably also involves the fight against tax evasion: “The numbers tell us that 2023 was a record year in the fight against tax evasion, with a recovery activity by the Revenue Agency which brought 24.7 billion into the state coffers, i.e. 4.5 billion more than the previous year: a figure never reached in the history of this nation. these must be added to the 6.7 billion euros resulting from the activity that the Revenue Agency carried out on behalf of other entities. Adding these two figures we arrive at the record figure of 31 billion euros”, underlines Meloni.
Another point the government will have to work on is the middle class. “We have to take care of the middle class. Anyone who earns 55,000 euros cannot be considered super rich and today these individuals pay over 50% in taxes. We need to intervene on this issue, before doing so we must find the resources to be able to proceed.” These are the words of the Deputy Minister of Economy, Maurizio Leo. A theme, that of the middle class, which returns to the fiscal scene given that in this first phase the focus was on “meeting the lower middle classes”. The Irpef reform, at least in this first part, has in fact completely forgotten the middle class, given that it has merged the first two brackets: for incomes up to 28,000 23% will be paid, from 28,000.01 to 50,000 euros it will go to 35% and over 50,000.01 euros there will be a tax rate of 43%. The greatest “advantage” was therefore granted to incomes up to 28,000, given that with the previous subdivision, taxation was equal to 25%. Also worth adding is the extension of the no tax area which increases up to 8,500 euros, in order to equate it to that present for pension income. Tax revision which, however, penalized incomes above 50,000.01 euros, i.e. the middle class, given that for 2024 an exemption of 260 euros is foreseen for the 19% deduction, with the exception of healthcare expenses and premiums insurance for disaster risk. An intervention on the middle class is therefore desirable given that in Italy it is increasingly becoming a species in danger of extinction and on which the majority of the tax burden falls.
