For a real tax reform, courage on tax expenditures is needed

The elimination of a more or less large part of tax expenditures could cover part of the reform; and above all to promote a significant expansion of the tax base, making it possible to reduce the nominal income tax rates

50 years after the last major reform, the Italian tax system requires extraordinary maintenance. The current withdrawal methods are outdated and partly obsolete. The evolution of the Italian economy, especially following the spread of the digital economy and globalization – with the reduction of the weight of dependent work, compared to forms of self-employment and the emergence of digital giants – has meant that a large part of existing taxes is no longer in line with the underlying tax bases. The high mobility of capital makes it difficult to tax some taxable bases and leads national states to act on only some of them. The reform measures for some taxes can mostly only be conceived at an international level, as highlighted by the OECD path for a minimum tax on multinational companies. The power of nation states in taxation decisions has been greatly reduced and still exists only on a few taxable bases – labor and wealth.