The IRPEF is the main tax paid by Italian taxpayers to the Italian State. Only natural persons (employees, retired people and self-employed workers) are involved, and as shown in the 2016 tax returns, these individuals give the Treasury more than 155 billion a year; the incidence of this revenue on the total tax revenue is equal to 33 per cent.
And although VAT numbers make up only 11,4 percent of the total number of natural persons present in Italy (equal to just over 4.660.000 units), each of them (artisans, traders, small entrepreneurs, freelancers, etc. ), pays an average of just over 4.700 euros of personal income tax per year, compared to the 4.000 euros that are withdrawn on average from the paycheck of an employee and just over 2.900 euros that, instead, the taxman collects from each pensioner (see Tab. 1).
The elaboration was carried out by the CGIA Studies Office on the basis of the data emerged from the 2016 tax returns (latest available).
“We felt it necessary to clarify this question - declares the coordinator of the CGIA Studies Office Paolo Zabeo - to disavow an increasingly widespread thesis according to which taxes in this country are paid mainly by those who are subjected to the levy at source. For heaven's sake, no one denies that among self-employment there are pockets of evasion or under-declaration that must be absolutely opposed, God forbid. These data, however, show irrefutably that the people of VAT numbers make a significant contribution to the treasury and are on average more harassed than other taxpayers ".
Returning to the numbers, in Italy employees and retirees amount to over 35.650.000: the latter make up 87,5 percent of the total of Irpef taxpayers and suffer a total levy of 127 billion euros per year (equal to 81,9 per cent of the total income tax). The self-employed, on the other hand, are just over 4.660.000 workers, equal to 11,4 per cent of the total income tax payers. They pay almost 22,5 billion euros to the tax authorities (equal to 14,5 per cent of the total) (see Table 2).
"We hope that the next Executive will immediately intervene with timely measures that will lighten the tax burden on small and micro enterprises - declares the Secretary of the CGIA Renato Mason - This would also benefit employees, given that even in recent years of economic difficulty the vast majority of new jobs were created by small businesses ”.
At a territorial level, the region with the highest number of active workers is Lombardy (over 3.785.000 employees and just over 839.000 VAT numbers) which, we recall, has almost 10 million inhabitants. Immediately below we find Lazio, as regards the number of employees (just over 2 million) and Veneto, as regards self-employed workers (around 463.300). Veneto is in third place nationally also for the number of employees (1.892.768), while Emilia Romagna is positioned on the bottom step of the podium due to the presence of self-employed workers (425.790). The largest number of pensioners is also concentrated in Lombardy (2.520.858). In second place we see Lazio (1.297.744) and in third Piedmont (1.256.035) (see Tab. 3).
Note: The Italy figure also includes tax payers who have not been allocated to a specific region, for this reason the sum of taxpayers in the various regions does not correspond to the total. Employees and pensioners correspond to those who have declared employment and / or pension income in the 2015. Self-employed workers are those who have declared income (for business purposes), self-employment, participation in partnerships or family business.
"With such an excessive tax - Mason concludes - we need an alliance between self-employed and employees. This situation penalizes both and consequently the economy of the country. With fewer taxes, in fact, the families of employees could potentially have more resources to make the internal consumption definitely take off and consequently also the turnover of artisans and small traders who live almost exclusively in domestic demand ".
Finally, on the front of the income tax by regions, the territory that pays the most is Lombardy. In absolute terms with 35,1 billion euros (equal to an average personal income tax of 6.085 euros). Lazio follows with 17,7 billion (average personal income tax of 6.058 euros) and Emilia Romagna with 14,1 billion (average personal income tax of 5.245 euros) (see Tab. 4).
