“You don’t give up on taxes.” The League goes on the attack on the taxman, but Zangrillo and Leo support the director of the Revenue Agency – Corriere.it

Nothing more than a concurrent business meeting, say his. At the end of a difficult day, with the amnesty of Matteo Salvini which meets consensus and appears less and less a provocation, the Director of the Revenue Agency, Ernesto Maria Ruffini, deserts the parliamentary hearing on the fiscal delegation. Already in the morning, however, the manager at the helm of the Agency from 2017 to 2018, then again from 2020 and just renewed for three years by the Meloni governmentdepicted by Salvini as a bandit who holds the Italians “hostage”, as he repeated yesterday, had made things very clear.

Matter of justice

An institutional defense, but very determined of the fight against tax evasion, in front of the Minister of Public Function Paolo Zangrillo, and to the Deputy of Economy, Maurizio Leo, two who immediately distanced themselves from Salvini’s amnesty. The fight against dishonest citizens “is not done out of a desire to persecute someone, but out of a question of justice towards those who pay taxes, and citizens who need state services”. We collect taxes, Ruffini specifies, “in the forms, ways and times established only by the legislator” and for everyone’s benefit. Paradoxically, he adds, “even citizens who evade their payment”.

The 23 million tax evaders

At the evening hearing in the Senate, scheduled after that of the fishermen and before that of the tobacconists, an official, Sergio Cristallo, was sent in his place with a folder full of disturbing numbers. They tell of 22 million and 800 thousand Italians who have on their shoulders at least one of the 172 and a half million tax bills that remain to be paid, for a stratospheric value: 1,153 billion euros. Of which only 10%, 114 billion deemed recoverable. The demonstration of how serious and profound the problem of evasion is, and far from being solved. Like the data from the last scrapping of the folders: it was the most popular in history, but you can also see the glass half empty. 3 million have joined, less than 14% of the debtors. Numbers that also give the measure of the discomfort experienced today within the Revenue Agency, “a public administration that operates with a profound sense of the State at the service of the community”, which is finally strengthening itself with new personnel and which just last year , Ruffini recalls, recorded the record for sums recovered from tax evasion, 20 billion. “There’s no need to give up now,” is the message.

Impossible to collect

The problem is that every year 70, if not 100 escape, and the fight is unequal with these laws, regulations and sentences that make it impossible to collect the amount due. The delegation for tax reform should be an opportunity to restore order, as Ruffini has been asking for some time, not for an amnesty. It makes little sense to speak of petty debtors harassed, of “avoidance of necessity.” Salvini thinks of the citizens who declare taxes and who in the end don’t pay, or stop, because they don’t have the money. But 80% of the evasion, as Ruffini points out, concerns citizens who have not presented their declaration at all, or who have even falsified it. Many of whom, at least 7 million, are also inveterate recidivists, and receive at least one folder every year. In short, the problem does not appear to be that of small taxpayers. Yesterday’s numbers say that 70% of the tax evasion, 800 billion, concerns the 1.3% of the richest taxpayers, those who have tax debts of over half a million euros. Then there are the small debtors, who are an enormous mass: the Agency’s databases count 11 million with a debt of up to a thousand euros, and another 7 have outstanding debts of up to 10 thousand euros, even if they owe a total of 40 billion, the 3.3% of the total.

Scrapping at risk

A part of the debts of small taxpayers had been canceled in the past with the two versions of the balance and write-off of individual credits, first up to a thousand euros, then up to 5 thousand euros, launched in 2018 and 2021. With those operations they were canceled 90 million individual deeds, for a total amount of 63.4 billion, but many folders, which contain more deeds, remained standing. There was the possibility of closing with the past with the latest version of the scrap. But after the foray into the amnesty, however, no one at the Revenue Agency, as indeed at the Ministry of the Economy, hides concern about the outcome of the operation. The first installments are expected in October and November, but the prospect of canceling even a part of the debt, in addition to penalties and interest, as proposed by the secretary of the League, and which all in all Forza Italia does not mind, represents a serious threat.