A provocation, the one launched by the CGIA Studies Office, which rests on the particularly significant economic dimension of two phenomena deeply felt by public opinion.
Although both are not comparable from a strictly statistical point of view, we can still say with good approximation that tax and social security evasion present in our country - equal, according to data from the Ministry of Economy and Finance, to approximately 110 billion euros per year - amounts to just over half of the waste, waste and inefficiencies caused by the mismanagement of our Public Administration (PA) which, the CGIA, estimates in over 200 billion euros per year.
Therefore, in the debit / credit relationship between the State and the Italian taxpayer, the latter would pay the highest price. Mind you, let the CGIA know, no one can argue that tax evasion is justifiable because our Public Administration has a relatively low level of efficiency.
If everyone paid their due, we would have more resources to make the public machine work better, thus ensuring a higher level of social justice and civilization. But it is equally true that if we had a PA with a level of productivity and response times to citizens / businesses in line with the European average, we would probably have even less tax evasion, because those who do not pay would be able to do so.
Those who defraud the tax authorities, therefore, must be prosecuted and condemned, without ifs and buts, wherever they hide; however, it should not be forgotten - and it happens frequently in public opinion - that our state machine works on average little and badly and - as the Governor of the Bank of Italy Ignazio Visco recalled: "Constitutes one of the main obstacles to the economic growth of our country".
If, in fact, we were able with a stroke of the magic wand to eliminate a good part of the waste and squandering that lurks within the PA, probably Italian public spending would cost much less and, consequently, the level of tax pressure would be more contained, benefiting precisely those who pay all taxes, down to the last cent.
Not only. It is widely believed that a country's tax loyalty is also inversely proportional to the level of taxation to which its taxpayers are subjected. Therefore, with a lower tax burden, even as a result of lower public spending, the size of the tax evasion would probably be well below the estimated 110 billion euros.
The efficiency of our public spending is a problem that we have been carrying on since time immemorial and it risks being so also in the next 6 years, when we will be called to invest a lot of public resources. Of the 210 billion euros made available by the European Union, 145 will be used to carry out the additional investments which - in 2026 - will guarantee, according to the Government, 3 additional percentage points of GDP.
Well, compared to these 145 billion, the added value of our country will, at the end of the operation, exceed 55 billion euros. Therefore, the profitability of the interventions indicated in the draft of the "National Recovery and Resilience Plan”Drawn up on January 12th, it appears very contained. Not only. As mentioned above, Europe will allow us to invest a total of 210 billion euros over the next six years. An important figure that will affect the future of our country. However, we must not forget that net of interest on the debt, the our public spending last year it was slightly less than 900 billion euros and, for more than 90 percent, it is of a current nature (salaries, pensions, purchases, structure operation, etc.).
It is clear that we will have to spend the resources assigned to us with the Next Generation US with great attention. But all the more reason we have to do it every year, when we are called to spend four times more than the European resources which, instead, we will spend in six years.
However, they are keen to point out from the CGIA that it would be incorrect to generalize and not recognize, for example, the levels of excellence that characterize many sectors of our PA. Such as, for example, healthcare (especially in the central-northern regions), the telecommunications sector, the level of teaching and professionalism present in many universities / research institutions and the quality of the work carried out by the police and the armed forces.
Having said that, the CGIA Studies Office has collected the results of a series of elaborations on the inefficiencies, waste and mismanagement that in various ways characterize our Public Administration.
In summary, it should be noted that:
- the annual cost incurred by companies for managing relations with the PA (bureaucracy) is equal to 57 billion euros (Source: The European House Ambrosetti);
- the trade payables of the PA to its suppliers amount to 53 billion euros (Source: Bank of Italy);
- the logistic-infrastructural deficit penalizes our economic system for an amount of 40 billion euros per year (Source: Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport);
- if the Italian civil justice had the same timing as the German one, the gain in terms of GDP would be 40 billion euros per year (Source: CER-Eures);
- 24 billion euros of excess public spending do not allow us to lower our tax burden compared to the EU average (Source: Discussion paper 23 European Commission);
- waste and corruption in healthcare cost the community 21,5 billion euros every year (Source: GIMBE);
- waste and inefficiencies in the local public transport sector amount to 12,5 billion euros per year (Source: The European House Ambrosetti-Ferrovie dello Stato).
As we have highlighted above, these inefficiencies in our PA are drawn from different sources, they cannot be added together, also because in many cases the areas of influence of these analyzes overlap. However, these warnings do not affect the correctness of the reflection expressed.
Basically, we can say that the amount of tax evasion is much lower than the negative effects generated by the malfunctioning of our PA. Effects that, in many circumstances, occur as a result of a clear violation of the law and regulations by unskilled managers and public officials.