Time.news – In an analysis on Il Sole 24 Ore the leader of the Pd group in the Finance and Treasury commission of the Senate Gianni Pittella writes that “the Prime Minister Draghi has announced a comprehensive and far-reaching reform, according to the constitutional principle of the progressiveness of the tax system” but that in the first instance “it is necessary to answer the” philosophical “question: the finding of financial resources to part of the tax is mainly used to redistribute the wealth produced or does it have to direct its tools to economic growth? “
According to Pittella, however, “a tax only oriented towards growth risks penalizing its equitable nature and safeguarding the equality of starting points, as well as an unfair levy, accentuatedly punitive towards the most dynamic sectors of the economy or discouraging with respect to investments , relegates the country to subordination in the markets “.
“A more sustainable withdrawal”
Therefore, in his opinion, “the fair distribution of the tax burden on income, consumption, and assets transmitted, opens the way to a sustainable and more reduced withdrawal of production factors compared to the current structures” and in this regard “it can only be “That the crystallization of savings in real estate for residential use finds a tax favor that does not reconcile with an optimal tax design”.
So much so that today “Irpef – observes Pittella – is the tax that provides the tax authorities with the prevailing revenue, but has lost the characteristics of the all-encompassing personal tax outlined with the 1971 reform. The countless changes have distorted it character, accentuating its imbalances. It is an inefficient and unfair tax, as more than two thirds of it is paid by earners and retirees. In addition, many types of income (from capital, real estate, self-employment below the turnover threshold of 65 thousand euros) are subject to a substitute tax at a proportional rate, therefore outside the scale of the rates by brackets and progressivity “.
Between the second and third echelons
Finally, “the revision of the personal income tax rates and brackets must have as a priority objective the reduction of the levy on the middle classes, knowing that the bulk of the declared income falls between the second and third brackets; the expansion of the no tax area, which can be shared in the abstract, cannot be separated from greater adherence to the tax returns of the recipients of income from self-employment and business ”. “After all – concludes the Pd group leader in the Commission – I am convinced that supporting the weaker classes and the fight against poverty is a task assigned to spending on welfare and not to taxation”.
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