Restart on 20 August with 139 deadlines. VAT receipts of 4.5 billion are expected

Ferragosto marks a de facto watershed that brings the tax holiday to an end. There are still a few days to go, but Wednesday 20 August will bring to the boil the knots that have been postponed due to the calendar. A calendar that proposes 139 deadlines, of which 138 are payments. The lion's share of these are mainly tax payments arising from the 2025 tax returns of VAT taxpayers. A hunt for almost 4.5 billion in receipts from the Irpef and Ires self-assessment.

This year, the usual extension of deadlines for taxpayers applying the tax forms (the Isa) and those inflat tax (technically the flat tax regime) who, although subject to it, are exempt from filing, arrived with the corrective decree of the concordat preventivo. A rewrite of the calendar that established a two-stage mechanism: extension from the ordinary deadline of 30 June to 21 July and then from 22 July to 20 August payment for late payers with the addition of the 0.40 per cent surcharge. On balance, the double deadline involved4.6 million VAT registrations between the self-employed, professionals and small companies. This also allowed the authorised intermediaries to close the tax settlement with more margin before the summer break, as the extra time offered to arrive even on 20 August to prepare the F24 payment proxy had a cost contained precisely in the 0.40 per cent surcharge. It remains, of course, that the summer payment, which includes the 2024 balance and the first 2025 advance payment for IRPEF and additional or substitute taxes, such as that of taxpayers under the flat-rate regime and IRES for corporations, remains a significant cash drain for economic activities, despite the possibility of using tax credits as compensation.

Reducing the field of vision to the post-Covid period only, also because in 2020 and 2021 the results were in fact 'misaligned' by the necessary suspensions and aids granted to cope with the economic crisis due to the pandemic restrictions, it can be seen how the three summer months (June, July and August) each year receive just under half of the total revenue from self-assessment. The decisive acceleration in 2023, also as a result of the post-pandemic economic recovery, attests to the total payments for the three months well above the threshold of 75 billion, rising to almost 82 billion in 2024.

Theoretically, it is therefore not far from reality to expect that at least on the self-assessment of VAT parcels, which are not affected by the dynamics shown in tax revenues from the beginning of the year on employed labour due to the new cut in the tax wedge, the goal of approaching in August the receipts of the same month of 2023 and 2024 is unrealistic, perhaps even with a threshold that could settle around 4.5 billion.

This also explains why the requests that have come in to completely clear the August calendar of tax appointments find a gigantic obstacle precisely in the cash flow that guarantees self-assessment in August. Cash flow that serves, among other things, to guarantee the payment of public salaries and pensions.