Scrapping, flexible plans and 50 euro minimum instalment

While at the Ministry of the Economy meetings are taking place on the Chart of Accounts to be presented to the Council of Ministers tomorrow at 7 p.m., the features of the 'rottamazione 5' that will be implemented with the budget law continue to come to light; in a public finance framework that does not seem destined to receive much oxygen from the two-year arrangement with creditors, which closed yesterday with an adhesion rate that, according to the first estimates of those in the sector, stops at around 10% of the audience.The new amnesty will be scaled down with respect to the initial plan written in the Leghist Ddl; 'but we already knew that,' acknowledges the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee Massimo Garavaglia. In all likelihood, the timetable will reach a maximum of eight years, 96 instalments. Not for everyone, however: because the idea is to diversify the payment plan according to the value of the debt, thus reducing the timeframe for lighter bills.

The aim is not to provide for too low instalments, which would have disproportionate management costs compared to the expected revenue: for the same reason, the mechanism should not allow single instalments of less than EUR 50. The detail is not insignificant, if one calculates that 75.9 per cent of the debts still accumulated in the collection warehouse do not amount to one thousand euros (the figure is in the report on the technical commission for collection, which will receive the political opinion of the regions and local authorities tomorrow in the Unified Assembly). Divided into 96 instalments, such a small debt would result in single payments of generally less than EUR 10.

But complicating the life of the four previous amnesties, which lost 58.6% of the expected revenue (47.7 billion out of 81.1 billion), is the specular problem of excessively high instalments when the sums involved are substantial. Especially at the beginning, because up to now the amnesties have called for 20% of the debt to be concentrated in the first two instalments, followed by 5% appointments. The new facilitated definition should therefore provide for instalments that are all equal, without an 'entry chip' against recidivists as sometimes assumed. And it could also soften the cut-off that triggers forfeiture after a missed appointment at the cashier's office, thus resembling more and more the ordinary instalment facility.

To complete the sudoku of public finance there is then the encore of the concordato preventivo, which closed its doors yesterday. Confidentiality on the official numbers is tight, but informal estimates circulated yesterday speak of an adhesion rate of around 10%, to be calculated, however, on the reduced number of those - a few hundred thousand taxpayers - who have already sent in their declarations (the deadline for the Income tax form expires at the end of October). The counter, in short, would stop at a fraction of the figures reached last year, when, however, the pact was open to flat-rate taxpayers. It remains to be seen whether the figures will encourage further reflection on a reopening of the deadline, which, however, the categories have so far not requested. Figures in hand, the structure of the manoeuvre, which will be described in general terms in the Public Finance Planning Document expected in Parliament immediately after the green light from the Council of Ministers, is beginning to take shape.

Calculations put the margins determined in particular by the good news on the expenditure side, which stays below the trajectory agreed with the EU and helps bring the deficit down to 3%, at around 8 billion. The almost 3 structural billions to be allocated to Irpef will write the most prominent chapter of the budget law, flanked on the tax side by the abundant annual billion for the three-year period dedicated to scrapping. Less than three billion should be absorbed by bills, on which, however, a solution has yet to be found to cut energy costs without violating state aid rules, and measures for the family. The expenditure framework then includes Defence, for at least 2 billion in addition to the extra spending already decided last year. Then the blanket will have to be extended with new revenues: starting with the banks, with which, however, talks have yet to come to a head.