Irpef, record incomes above 1 trillion but 64% of the tax still borne by the middle class

The long wave of the post-Covid recovery is also hitting 2023 and declared income in 2024. In the year in which GDP increased by 6.7 per cent in nominal terms and 0.7 per cent in real terms, the total income declared by natural persons exceeds 1 trillion with an increase of 5.9 per cent over the 2022 tax year. The average value thus stands at EUR 24,830. This is what emerges from the statistical data released by the Department of Finance on the tax returns submitted up to last October. Data that confirm the now chronic disparities of the queen of Italian taxes, starting with the confirmation that out of 42.5 million taxpayers who report to the tax authorities, 84% declare that they have income from employment and pensions.

The net tax, i.e. the tax actually paid to the Treasury, also grew by 9% to 189.9 billion for a per capita value of EUR 5,660. But as always, there remains a grey area of more than 9 million subjects who declare zero tax. This number even rises to 11.8 million who, despite having an income, do not pay taxes thanks to the supplementary bonus, the old 80 euros of Renzi.

The snapshot of the breakdown by income class once again confirms that it is always the middle class that pays taxes in Italy, i.e. those taxpayers who in the eyes of the tax authorities are above 35 thousand euro: more than one in five declares 64% of Irpef, even 30% declare between 35 thousand and 70 thousand euro. Only 0.2 per cent have a total income above EUR 300 thousand and declare 7.1 per cent of the total net Irpef.

In the Italian tour of Irpef, the pink jersey belongs to Lombardy, where the highest overall average income is just over 29,000 euro per capita. This is followed by the Autonomous Province of Bolzano with 28,780 euros, while the black jersey belongs to Calabria with 18,230 euros. Therefore, the distance between the average incomes of the central-northern regions and those of the southern regions remains significant. A figure that, since it concerns declarations submitted by employees, is in any case influenced by employment, the weight of wages, and certainly by the propensity to evasion and, in particular, to the black economy.

The highest income is declared by professionals and the self-employed with an average rising from just over 64,000 euro in 2022 to 70,360 euro. That declared by entrepreneurs goes up and touches 29,250 euro, while the average income of employees stands at 23,290 euro and that of pensioners at 21,260 euro. The difference between the incomes of employees and those of the self-employed and entrepreneurs is mainly linked to the different way in which social security contributions are indicated within these incomes where, for employees, they are reported net of the amounts paid to the social security system, while for VAT holders and businesses, incomes are gross of contributions with an average declared value of just over 10,000 euros. Excluded from the statistics are the 1.9 million taxpayers who have escaped from Irpef by opting for the flat-rate regime with the 15% flat tax and who have grown by 6.5% since 2022.