The taxes on the house that you live (the so-called first home) are always ill-digested by the Italian.
Worse, if you are constantly bombarded by the media with the acronyms, in recent years there have been (IUC, IMU, TASI, COUNTRIES, etc.) and generating some confusion among homeowners (Source: Eurostat: the percentage of households owning the main home in Italy in 2013, was equal to 73%, almost 7 percentage points higher than the euro area average).
Recent work carried out by the Bank of Italy (www.bancaditalia.it – series Issues in Economics and Finance), by Giovanna Messina and Marco Savegnago, focused on their own 'evolution of real estate taxation in our country. Let's look at a summary of the salient data.
The levy estate was analyzed in its dual role as a privileged source of financing of local authorities, and useful tool to tax the family assets.
The two researchers, using aggregate data and information microeconomics, showed a significant reduction of the component linked to home ownership among the 2012 and 2014, in the order of one-fifth of the tax paid in 2012 (remember that the introduction of the IMU, right in 2012, led tax revenues recurring* on the house in line with the European average), and considering the charges for the service of waste, the overall tax burden has remained substantially unchanged.
However it should be noted a higher incidence of the levy on low-income families, due to the lower impact of deductions.
The paper concludes with some suggestions of the two authors, about increasing the visibility (make visible the choices for the taxation of local administrators to taxpayers / voters) and fairness of the levy (completing the reform of the cadastre, provide a tool to increase, equal revenue, the fairness of the levy on housing residence).
Alex Gaetani
*taxes are recurring withdrawals annually on real estate, unlike those that occur at the time of transfer or on the occasion of extraordinary events.