A critical examination of the Italian tax system

Abstract

The article gives a brief outline of the Italian tax system now in force and illustrates and discusses its fundamental deficiencies. According to the author, the tax system is based essentially on objective taxes, rather than on personal taxes and therefore not only does it cut into production more markedly, thus helping to raise costs, it does not allow for taking into account marginal cases of tax-payers who, though receiving the same income as others, have a lower tax-paying capacity. A second drawback consists in the insufficient progressive character of the taxes due both to the notable weight of indirect regressive taxes, and to the scanty weight of progressive personal taxation. A third defect consists in an irrational qualitative discrimination of incomes and to defective systems of assessment. JEL: H20, H21

Keywords

• Italian tax system
• objective taxation
• personal taxation
• production
• weight
• indirect regressive taxes