Italian Government Introduces 2010 Budget Bill

by Ulrika Lomas, Tax-News.com, Brussels

24 September 2009

The Italian Government has issued its 2010 budget bill (legge finanziaria per il 2010), which is an extremely slimmed-down version compared with those in previous years.

Giulio Tremonti, the Minister of the Economy, emphasized that the traditional budget bill, intended to be an annual financial strategy to be executed through a package of tax measures, would no longer exist. The bill, he said, merely represented the state’s accounts. Tax measures, if necessary, would now be taken whenever they were required, and not merely at a year-end.

The bill, to apply from January 1, 2010, is therefore of three clauses only. The first clause gives overall levels of revenue and expenditure in 2010 and within the three-year economic plan (now extended to cover 2013); the second clause includes a breakdown of expenditure allocated to various services; and the third clause details various funds and tables.

However, Tremonti pointed out that, over the next three years, the country’s accounts will have stabilized and will show an improvement of EUR114bn (USD168bn). As the government expects Italy’s GDP to show growth of 0.7% in 2010 (as against a contraction of 4.8% this year), the budget deficit will reduce to 5% next year (compared to 5.3% in 2009).

With regard to revenue to be collected from the latest tax amnesty and other measures taken against tax evasion (for which no indicative forecast had been given in the anti-crisis incentive package earlier in the year), Tremonti said that any such revenue would be collected in a fund. He added that the government had certain ideas of how that fund could be utilized, dependent on the amount finally realized.

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