undertake to release the 19 billion that weigh on companies – Corriere.it

Banks can do more. According to government assessments, it is not true that they would no longer have the fiscal capacity to compensate credits deriving from the Superbonus and other building bonuses. Based on revenue data, the credit system pays around 32 billion euros every year in taxes and contributions (including those on their employees). The rules make it possible to offset these payments with any tax credits purchased from individuals and companies that carry out the renovation works. But, on average, the banks do it for a value of about 7 billion a year. So, in theory, there would still be 25 billion room to absorb credits; in particular those 19 billion euros that belong to companies that are unable to sell them, that is, to find buyers among banks and other financial intermediaries, to obtain the necessary liquidity to pay suppliers and employees.

The mini criminal shield

This is why, at the end of yesterday’s meetings between the government and all the subjects involved in the Superbonus game, the solution that makes its way to the pressing request of the companies of release problem loans that of doing everything possible to ensure that banks and other intermediaries start buying credits again and then discount them in the F24 models with which they periodically pay taxes and contributions. To absorb the 19 billion of problem loans, the banks would have to buy them – among other things making money, underline the government technicians closest to the dossier – for less than 5 billion a year, considering that the Superbonus is deductible in 4 years. This is why the Minister of the Economy, Giancarlo Giorgetti, meeting Confindustria, Ance and the other business associations and professionals in the sector yesterday afternoon, while not closing the request that came from the same categories to allow compensation also through the F24 of bank customers, pointed out that, before arriving at this, the banks still have sufficient fiscal space to absorb the credits. Which, according to the government, stalled for various reasons, that is, the fear of the banks themselves of suffering penal consequences by purchasing credits which then turn out to be bogus. A problem that, according to Giorgetti, was resolved with the rules included in Thursday’s decree, which, excluding the cases of willful misconduct, relieve the banks of joint and several liability, once the envisaged checks on the origin of the credits have been carried out. This is why, as the minister says, banks and intermediaries no longer have alibis. And Giorgetti hasn’t closed even with respect to a greater involvement of the large subsidiaries, as requested by the building associations, who are thinking in particular of Eni and Enel.

Moral suasion

The minister took care to reassure the various associations, Ance in the lead, already ready to take to the streets also with the trade unions, if they had found a wall in Palazzo Chigi. But the wall is not there. It being understood that the government will not go back on the decision to put an end to the discount on invoices and the transfer of credits with regard to new jobs, on the rest Giorgetti and the other ministers delivered the message to companies and professionals in the sector that the government is aware of the urgency of solving the problem of non-performing loans and of providing a framework of certainty for future works, without excluding the willingness to improve the decree Parliament. So is everything on the way to a solution? Not exactly. Companies argue that to avoid chain bankruptcies we need to act quickly. Will the moral suasion on the banks and the mini penal shield of the decree be enough to get the credit market back in motion?