Tremonti Calls For Italian Tax Reform

by Ulrika Lomas, Tax-News.com, Brussels

15 September 2010

During a speech in Gubbio, the Minister of the Economy, Giulio Tremonti, continued his call for Italian tax reforms, confirming that they would not include any increase in taxation.

Following the passage of the deficit reduction package, which relied heavily on cuts to public expenditure, and the progress now being made on the fiscal decentralization arrangements to achieve a greater correlation between local spending and taxation, he said that the time has arrived for a structural overhaul of the country’s tax system.

He reiterated that the government has the intention of discussing fiscal reform in inclusive terms. Tremonti guaranteed that any tax reforms would not be finalized until there had been full discussion with all interested parties. He was not, he said, talking of piecemeal small corrections in the existing system, or its “magical reduction”, but of its rationalization with input from all sides of the economy, including both employers and employees.

Reminding his audience that the present government had not increased the country’s tax burden, and did not intend to do so, he was repeating a previous assurance that Italian tax reforms would not include new taxes but, instead, that existing tax exemptions and allowances should be simplified, leaving space for a reduction in the tax burden to be shared between individuals and companies.

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