There is a bottomless well that has been devoured any attempt to put order in public finances for years: it’s called fiscal warehouse And today it touches altitude 1,300 billion euros. An inert mass of folders, notices, charges never collected that transformed the Revenue Agency Collection into an archivist rather than in an impact. Each proposal for amnesty, scrapping or masked discount has been accepted with the usual script: promise of restarting, disappointing takings, boomerang effect on honest taxpayers.
Now the Alloy try to relaunch with theyet another scrappingthe fifth, but finds the frost of the technical institutions in front of him. Court of Auditors, Parliamentary Budget Office and even MEF raise their hands: so only the illusion of recovery is produced.
Accumulated tax debts, a ballast of over 1,200 billion
The rusty gear of collection makes water from all sides. During the auditions in the Finance Commission in the Senate, it emerged that From 2000 to 2024 were entrusted to the Revenue Agency more than 1,870 billion euros. Of these, well over 1,270 billion have turned into a tax swamp, never reclaimed.
Alone 180 billion were actually recovered. Another 421 billion have been canceled or relieved. More than 290 million positions still remain standing, which correspond to about 173 million executive acts between folders, notices and investigations.
The recipients are over 21 million citizens or businesses. A good part of these sums is destined to remain on paper: according to the updated data, 537 billion fall within the category of out -of -course credits, linked to deceased, failed, nullary or already affected by precautionary measures. Worse than us, only those who had to learn to deal with default and Troika.
Tax amnesties, the short circuit of scrapping
One of the main ones causes identified for this situation is the repeat themselves with facilitating tools: amnesties, sanatories, scrapping, cancellations and dilations that over the years have fueled the idea that not paying it is convenient. “The increase in the phenomena of non -fulfillment, potentially fueled by repeated scrapping, cancellations, excerpts and dilations, strengthen the expectations of future demolition or cancellations or installments”, warns the Court of Auditors.
Scrapping quinquies, very uncertain future and controversy
The proposal currently to the exam provides for a new form of extension over ten years also for the debts already subject to other amnesties. The Director of Finance of the MEF, Giovanni Spalletta, did not hide his perplexities: “They entail inevitable reflections on public accounts”. According to the UPB, this strategy feeds the expectation of further concessions e penalizes the collection ordinary and spontaneous revenue.
The investigation of the Finance Commission, which the League hoped could strengthen the proposal of the new Quinquies scrapping, instead highlighted a vast critical front. The hardest findings came from Court of Auditors and Parliamentary Budget Office, which defined the previous amnesties failure. According to experts, the multiplication of facilitating tools has reduced the propensity to pay off the debts spontaneously, generating direct damage to the tax authorities.
Scrapping and imbalances in the tax system
Severe criticisms have also arrived from Valeria De Bonis (Upb), which questioned the equity of the system: without a selection based on contributory capacity, those who obtain benefits from amnesty and excerpts are not said that they are more difficult to pay regularly.
Also the duration of the new installment, 120 equal months, is considered excessive: a measure that risks feeding the tendency to pour few installments and then disappear. De Bonis also highlighted how the warehouse is composed largely of debts lower than 1,000 euros, mainly registered to natural persons. Factors that, combined with lens timing and ineffective collection tools, hinder recovery.
Tax collection and persistent illusions
The manager of the commission established to find structural solutions, Roberto Benedetti, admitted the difficulties in obtaining detail information from the agency. The idea of reorganizing the recovery of credits by tax code and on the basis of the probability of collection has been implemented in theoretical, but not yet made operational.
Meanwhile, scrapping accumulate, the collections slow down and the warehouse swells. Shoulder suggested to introduce a differentiation in the number of installments, parameterized to the amount of the debt, and to homogenize the criteria to avoid disparity between taxpayers. The Court of Auditors, through the words of Enrico Flaccadoro, also reiterated the need to strengthen the legal tools available to collection, rather than reiterating temporary measures that feed the illusion of further amnesties.
