Building bonuses, Ruffini: '15 billion scammed'

Approximately 15 billion building bonus-related frauds out of more than 200 billion options reported to the Inland Revenue. This is where the counter of non-existent credits came in, according to the director of the Revenue Agency, Ernesto Maria Ruffini, during a hearing in the Senate Finance Committee on the superbonus decree (Decree-Law No. 39/2024).

'In total,' he explained, 'the credits subject to fraud were approximately 15 billion, of which 8.6 billion were subject to preventive seizures by the judicial authorities and 6.3 billion suspended and discarded by the credit assignment platform since it was activated'. Not all of these credits, however, 'have been used to avoid paying taxes'.

In several cases, that is, according to Ruffini, there may have been no damage to the Treasury. Because the non-existent credit may have been acquired by the transferee carelessly, in order to use it later to pay tax. Or it may have been the case that the scam was stopped before offsetting. This is, unfortunately, a very small part.

Also testifying to the problematic nature of the tax credit mechanism is the figure for Ace credits, which were created to incentivise the capitalisation of companies. "Ace credits accrued 518 million in the hands of 13,155 subjects (with data updated to 13 April)," said Ruffini. "Non-existent credits amount to about 100 million. This is an estimate for now'.