ROME (ITALPRESS) – The Parliamentary Budget Bureau (UPB) today spoke at a hearing before the Senate Finance and Treasury Committee as part of its fact-finding investigation into the management of the tax warehouse by the collection agency and the bill proposing the introduction of, among other things, the scrapping quinquies (DDL No. 1375).
UPB board member Valeria De Bonis, after a brief description of the measures that have affected pending loads since 2016 and those proposed in the DDL, dwelt on the evolution in recent years of collected, forgiven and residual debts and advanced considerations on the factors that affect the accumulation of credits in the role warehouse, Italy’s positioning in international comparison, and how the measures contained in the DDL under consideration fit into the reform process initiated with the implementing decree of the enabling act for tax reform. Councillor De Bonis pointed out that “the numerous regulatory interventions of the last two decades have not significantly affected the inefficiencies that characterize compulsory collection, with repercussions on the size and quality of the stock of receivables entrusted to collection, as well as on the revenues of the Public Administrations.”
In addition, he said that “repeated and layered measures of facilitated settlement and cancellation of past debts contribute to taxpayers’ expectations of future reliefs and amnesties, with negative repercussions on spontaneous adjustment payments, ordinary and ordinary coactive collection, and, in general, the level of tax compliance. Moreover, the effects these measures have on the overall fairness of the tax system should not be overlooked. These measures should therefore be accompanied by an improvement in the efficiency of both the mechanisms of coactive collection and of stimulating spontaneous adjustment when paying taxes.”
The interventions of recent years, partly re-proposed with the DDL under review, have not contributed significantly to the disposal of outstanding debts. In 2022, the last year for which OECD data on the functioning of financial administrations are available, Italy was the country that, after Greece, recorded the highest value of the incidence of the stock of uncollected debts at the end of the year on total revenues (181 percent) and the one with the lowest ratio of uncollectible uncollectible debts to total uncollected debts (about 5 percent). These results also depend on the different approaches, more or less systematic, followed in individual countries in relation to the discharge of past debts deemed no longer collectible.
At the end of November 2024, the stock of debts entrusted to the collection agent reached more than 1.865 billion, an increase of 36.5 percent compared to the end of 2019, while the collected amount stood at about 178 billion (just 9.5 percent of the total), demonstrating the limited effectiveness of the enforcement collection action,” the UPB points out. “These are mainly individual debts of less than 1,000 euros and mainly concerning individuals.
The size of the warehouse has been affected by: the large number of individual credits of small amounts entrusted annually; the long timeframes of the fulfillments required from AdER for each credit; the lack of a mechanism for automatic discharge of uncollectible credits; the complex procedure for ascertaining the uncollectibility of the entrusted credit; the gradual narrowing of the scope of action for enforcement recovery; and a not always efficient management of the collection system, both spontaneous and coercive.
The residual accounting load, i.e., net of collected amounts (178 billion) and those subject to remission and cancellation (419.5 billion), amounts to 1,267.6 billion (up 32.8 percent from 2019). Of these, the Agenzia delle Entrate-Riscossione (AdER) estimates the gross residual inventory (i.e., folders with a higher degree of collectability) at only 100.8 billion, 55.4 percent of the total entrusted load and 8 percent of the accounting residual load. This is 291 million individual claims contained in about 175 million folders, charge notices or enforceable assessments. As of the end of March 2024, facilitated settlements and write-offs of past debts have collectively reduced the inventory of roles by about 112 billion, including 30 billion as a result of the former (31.6 billion as of the end of November 2024) and more than 82 billion from the latter. The annual rate of accumulation of new receivables remains significant.
According to the Parliamentary Budget Office, “for a consistent reduction of the credit inventory, an organic reform intervention is necessary that would provide, among other things, in addition to the automatic cancellation of credits that have become uncollectible already introduced by Legislative Decree 110/2024, implementing the tax reform enabling act, a further strengthening and streamlining of the mechanism for recognizing the uncollectibility of the entrusted credit. This would allow the collection agent to focus on the files on which the likelihood of collection is highest. It should also be allowed the Revenue Agency to make the best use of the information potential at its disposal, ensuring the interoperability of databases, both for a greater and more timely knowledge of the characteristics of individual claims and the subjects to which they refer, and for a more effective identification and analysis of the risk not only of evasion but also of non-payment,” the UPB concludes. The assessment of the DDL should also be placed in the general framework of reform: a possible conflict emerges between the introduction of a new measure of facilitated definition and the planned discharge of all or part of the credit stock by the end of 2031 on the basis of proposals of the Commission specifically established by the implementing decree of the enabling act for tax reform. In addition, the possibility granted to local governments to introduce forms of facilitated definition should be more appropriately placed in the context of the implementation of the tax delegation law on local taxes.”
– IPA Agency photo –
(ITALPRESS).
