Fiscalità ideale, legale, reale, percepita

According to Antonio Pedone, an important problem as regards taxation is the division among an ideal, a legal, an effective, and a perceived fiscal system, with the main difference between the ideal and the legal systems. This difference is very important in Italy: personal taxation is less than half with respect to what is expected. The differences can be explained going back to the tributary reform of the first seventy years of the past century. Here many problems arise, in particular from the attempt to make the tax system formally progressive. First of all the attempt has been a complete failure. Secondly there is the single taxation of interest, and the double taxation on income from firms - direct and through capital gains. Thirdly immigrants have to declare incomes from the real and financial capital of their original countries. Many other problems follow these. If the reform had not touched the imposable base, keeping it national, not only would these problems not have existed, but progressivity could also be substantially much higher than now. To obtain this, in the first place the social contribution has to be made progressive; secondly, only with that base is it possible to reduce rents: interests, extra big firms profits, and others. Even in indirect taxation, a more conservative approach was needed, placing Iva alongside a small purchases tax. It is possible therefore to construct a fiscal system which conjugates the distributive and allocative goals, including the containment of fiscal evasion. In this way the difference between the ideal and legal system would almost disappear.