Where there is the superbonus there are fiscal problems. The transfer of credit and the invoice discount, in addition to weighing on Italy's debt in the coming years, has also burdened the state accounts relating to the various tax breaks, which were already not particularly brilliant. The problem with tax deductions and deductions is that they continue to grow disproportionately from year to year. This was certified by the latest study published by the Parliamentary Budget Office which put pen to paper as between 2018 and 2024 tax breaks grew by a third, going from 466 to 625 (+34.1%). and the overall revenue loss almost doubled, from 54 to 105 billion (+93.6%).
The report therefore highlighted how, in the period analysed, special regimes and exemptions in particular increased, especially in the area of Irpef. There is also an exceptional increase in tax credits (particularly those linked to construction works) and the greater use of specific forms of relief such as corporate welfare, the extent of which cannot yet be clearly deduced from the available data. Alongside these new phenomena, the natural dynamics of the existing benefits that follow the social and institutional phenomena to which they are structurally connected, and the new deductions and tax deductions that are granted every year overlap. In this context, the attempts to reduce the tax breaks were not very effective, given that an overall saving of only 250 million euros was achieved (31 referring to the first measure and 220 to the second). The reason is linked to the fact that there was an agreement on the containment of deductions for charges and donations for Irpef purposes, which are worth a total of only 6% of all benefits, through two separate interventions. The first is attributable to the 2020 budget law which decided on partial non-deductibility for taxpayers who had an income exceeding 120,000 euros, for the majority of expenses deductible at 19% and of donations to non-profit organisations. The second intervention was instead made by this government with the first module of the Irpef reform. In this case, an exemption of 260 euros has been introduced for deductions at 19%, for taxpayers with a total income exceeding 50,000 euros.
We therefore find ourselves in a system of tax breaks that is complex, fragmented, not very transparent and which does not benefit the weakest sections of the population: “the tendency to benefit mainly high-income taxpayers”, we read in the report. With the tax reform the government has the power to change this situation but the path is all uphill. The reorganization of tax expenditure is a job of extreme precision, given that the tax breaks have an impact (positively) on the bills of the various taxpayers. It is certainly necessary to reduce the number and transform some of them, as the Parliamentary Budget Office itself suggests, into ad hoc bonuses with a defined duration and renewable only through legislative interventions if the circumstances require it. The crucial issue, and therefore particular attention must be paid, to the chapter on healthcare tax breaks, which alone represent almost two thirds of the total deductible expenditure (65%) and which are however fundamental for the treatment of Italians.
