Concordat letters, Salvini: inquisitorial tone wrong. Leo's reply: cooperation with taxpayers is the goal

The atmosphere during the Council of Ministers, scheduled for the afternoon of Monday 9 December, will not be the best, as tensions between the majority parties: in the same hours in which the vice-premier Matteo Salvini reminded his colleague Antonio Tajani, who is sceptical about the 'golden power' for Unicredit-Bpm, that he is not the holder of the Economy, the League attacked the push for the concordat, strongly wanted by Fdi's deputy minister, Maurizio Leo.

To intervene is Salvini directly: 'I did not agree either in the method or in the merit of this sending of millions of letters under Christmas with an inquisitorial tone to people who have paid their taxes,' said Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Infrastructure and Transport Matteo Salvini. "If there is an instrument that does not work, and I am thinking of the concordat, we must not chase the Italians, but change the instrument. The League's proposal is one that has worked in the past, and I think it can also do so in the future, namely the long-term scrapping."

Shortly afterwards came the reply from Maurizio Leo, deputy minister for the economy: 'On my part and that of the government,' said the Fdi exponent, 'there is no intention to harass, threaten or intimidate anyone. The objective of the tax reform, which we are rapidly implementing, goes in the direction of transparent behaviour on the part of the financial administration in a collaborative relationship with taxpayers. Preventive information aimed at avoiding assessments goes in this direction'. And again: 'Even the letters recently sent by the Inland Revenue are part of the ordinary communication activity to report any anomalies found'.

"We find mistaken in both merit and method the shower of letters that the Agenzia delle Entrate has poured on Italian taxpayers to contest hypothetical anomalies, with the aim of inducing them to adhere to the two-year arrangement with creditors, regardless of their tax merit," attacked the Carroccio, which relaunched the five-year tax amnesty "loudly requested by citizens" and excluded, for the moment, by the very person in charge of the tax dossier, Deputy Minister Leo.

On Monday, after closing the Milleproroghe, it will be the last opportunity for the ministers to directly discuss the manoeuvre before the formal start of work on the amendments in the committee on Tuesday. Over the weekend, most likely on Sunday, a meeting between the government and rapporteurs at the Mef will advance the fine-tuning of their amendments, which could even exceed ten. The arrival in the House is set for the 16th, but a postponement to the 18th is not excluded.