but the Draghi reform has been cancelled- Corriere.it

In the end, the EU returned to urge Italy: the Cadastre must be updated to current market values. Already last year, the Commission had produced a recommendation inviting our country to reduce the tax burden on labor through a reform of cadastral values. As we know, Italy is one of the countries with the highest tax burden on labor income, while among those that tax real estate the least. The Draghi government had launched a reform whose enabling law was consistent with the recommendation of the European Commission. But things went as we know. In February 2022 the Draghi government had gone down 4 times in the Chamber, due to the ceiling on cash, but also due to the Lega barricade which asked for the rules on the mapping of the Land Registry to be removed. Then, again, the following March, the reform desired by Draghi passed by only one vote, rejecting the suppressive amendment presented by right-wing and centre-right parties in the Finance Committee in the Chamber. The fall of the government and new elections in autumn 2022, with the victory of the right-centre coalition, have put a tombstone on the reform. But on the Catasto the Italian government – this is the replica of Palazzo Chigi in Brussels – believes it is ahead of France and Germany, where the cadastral values ​​are older than the Italian ones.

The no of the Meloni government

Draghi repeated it like a broken record: in fact, mapping our real estate stock would ensure transparency by bringing out the “ghost properties” and also the building abuses that have taken place since the end of the 1980s (the last revision of the cadastre of 1988-89 ) to date. At the beginning of 2023, however, after the Meloni government took office, the Deputy Minister of Economy, Maurizio Leo, reiterated that the reform is not a priority and that the Land Registry would not find space in the new enabling law. The deputy minister had in fact explained that the Italian cadastral values ​​do not need to be updated immediately, since the last update dates back to the late 1980s. In other countries – he added – the revaluation is much older: the cadastral update has not been done in Austria since 1973, in Belgium since 1975, in France since 1970, while ours dates back to 88-89, so we cannot say be the Cinderella of updating cadastral values. In short, given that we did the update after other countries, we’re done like this. Forgetting, however, that Austria, France and Belgium do not have the number of “ghost properties” and building abuses that Italy “boasts”.

What did the Draghi reform foresee?

The land registry reform according to Draghi involved two distinct things. The first, which – it must be said – was in fact shared by the entire Parliament, was to order the modernization of the building mapping tools. In particular, the rule aimed to facilitate and accelerate the identification and correct classification of “ghost properties” (those that are not registered to date) or that do not respect the real consistency of fact or intended use. Ditto for properties that do not comply with the assigned cadastral category, building land registered as agricultural land and all those that fall into the category of “unlawful properties”. The second point of the reform attempted by the former premier, and which had split the vast majority of him in two, provided for the revision of the land register of buildings. The Italian Land Registry traditionally has an income nature (that is, of the property, the potential ability to produce income is considered): the novelty attempted by Draghi was to introduce the patrimonial classification. This is the hot point of the reform, with the right accusing that the change in revenue would have repercussions on housing taxes.

Draghi’s unheard reassurances

Draghi’s thesis was that the change in revenue would essentially change nothing. The new calculations would have made real data available, which however would not have been used as a tax base for new taxes. In short, someone would have gained something, others would have lost, but in fact the feared new taxes on the house would not have existed. Certainly, then, not immediately, because the reform would have had its first effects starting from 2026, when there would have been a new government in any case (in fact, the current one of Meloni) which could have supervised precisely this point. But Draghi’s reassurances had had no effect.

The last act

And so we arrive at the last act. Maybe that’s a little farcical. The land registry reform suddenly appeared last April in the Meloni government’s economic and financial document, thus complying with the requests of the European Union. The text says: Adopt and adequately implement the enabling law on tax reform, to further reduce taxes on labor and increase the efficiency of the system, in particular through a revision of the effective marginal tax rates, the alignment of cadastral values ​​to current market values…. Has the majority in government therefore changed their mind? The MEF took care of answering, which specified that the sentence simply refers to a session of a purely reconnaissance nature of the interventions already adopted in the past. In short, it was just a copy and paste of the EU recommendations, a way to reassure Brussels, buy time and once again postpone this blessed reform.