TAX NEWS - 2010

Italy Tax: Italy rooms in the tax burden

ROME -- It increased in 2009, rising tax burden in Italy as the fifth largest in Europe reaching France. European record , however, regarding the debt. The weight of the Treasury, underlines the Istat, rose from 42.9 % in 2008 to 43.2% . In Europe , we are at the same level of France but lower than Belgium (45.3 % ) and Austria (43.8 %) , as well as compared to the Scandinavian countries , whose most advanced welfare systems have historically required greater use to general taxation. Denmark and Sweden , in fact , have the highest values of the tax burden ( 49.0% and 47.8% respectively ), while the lowest are found in Latvia (26.5 % ), Romania (28.0 % ) Slovakia and Ireland (29.1 % ), Lithuania (29.3 % ) and Bulgaria (30.9 %).

Returning to Italy , Istat noted that the result of 2009 is " the effect of a reduction of GDP higher than that recorded total revenue from taxation or whose negative trend (-2.3 %) was attenuated by that , in strong increase taxes to extraordinary ( c taxes / capital) , increased in absolute terms by almost twelve billion . Among the special tax levies are classified operated under the so-called " tax shelter " for an amount of about 5 billion, and one-off payment of substitute tax of taxes, which have affected some sectors of the economy , particularly banking.

All other components of the tax were down : indirect taxes of 4.2 % ( after having already fallen by 4.9 in 2008) , direct taxes and social contributions by 7.1 % Actual 0.5% . The decline in direct taxes is mainly due to lower revenue IRES ( -23.1 %) compared to 2008 , while that of indirect taxes has suffered significant reductions in VAT revenues (-6.7 %) and IRAP ( -13.0 %). The trend of actual social contributions reflects the tightness of wages and salaries, due to slight increase in the average per – capita income , which partially offset the decline in employment.

Regarding public debt , however, notes that in Italy , Istat is always the highest in Europe: in 2009 , relative to GDP, after a decline observed in 2007, has already recorded continued growth in 2008 , increasing almost 10 percentage points over the previous year and standing at 115.8 % which is very close to those observed in the late 90s. In comparison with EU countries, the stock of Italian public debt as a percentage of GDP continues to be the highest , compared with 73.6% detected an average EU -27) .