Imu evasion of 5 billion a year from ghost houses and non-payments
The fight against the holes in the Cadastre relaunched by Giorgetti has sparked political confrontation, but the phenomenon is huge: 20.9 per cent of the tax escapes
3' min read
3' min read
Houses are, by nature and definition, real estate. And generally quite visible as well. That is, they have the characteristics that should prevent tax evasion a priori. Yet in Italy taxes on bricks and mortar are evaded, and how.
This is confirmed by the latest report on the unobserved economy published a few days ago by the Ministry of the Economy, which sets out two quite effective figures to measure the terms of the problem: every year evasion opens a 5 billion chasm in the Imu (Italian municipal tax), which therefore leaves a fifth (20.9% to be precise) of its potential revenue on the street. And the tax value of the real estate that escapes the cash register adds up to the astronomical figure of 494 billion. These are the real 'ghost' properties, i.e. those that exist in reality but not in the cadastral maps, and those that only become such when it comes to paying: because in the official censuses they are there, but no one really checks or manages to enforce payment.
These numbers offer an additional explanation of the political delicacy of bricks and mortar, which found yet another confirmation last Tuesday when a couple of hints on the subject from the Minister of the Economy were enough to set off tensions in the government and make the opposition take to the barricades against the idea of 'new taxes' on housing.
Giorgetti, it is well known, did not actually speak of new taxes. He confined himself to relaunching two dossiers that were anything but unheard of: a regulation (paragraph 86) of last year's budget law, which for properties renovated with the Superbonus provided for checks on cadastral rents that then evidently remained more or less unimplemented, and the (eternal) hunt for ghost houses. In practice, two forms of combating avoidance (the first) and evasion (the second) on bricks and mortar.
The practice is quite widespread, as the official photograph of the Ministry of the Economy shows. Although with different intensities depending on the territories, in a geography in which it is not complicated to find a correlation between average levels of administrative efficiency and those of lost revenue. Because, in fact, unlike a corporate operation or even a job done in the black, a house is not easy to hide, and speculatively it would not be difficult to find for those who go after taxes.
