Taxes, the jungle of 571 bonuses: for the State the cost is 112 billion in 2027

The distance between number and weight is even clearer if you look at the form of the discount. The exclusions are the most widespread, 126, and are worth 11.9 billion; there are 111 exemptions for 6.3 billion. There are just 55 deductions and they concentrate 59.1 billion, more than half of the entire tax expenditure.

On the beneficiaries front, 231 measures worth 71.2 billion go to natural persons. There are 71 benefits aimed together with natural and legal persons but they cost 22.9 billion. The 50 measures for businesses and societies are worth 3.1 billion, just over the 2.96 billion that reach banks and insurance companies through 14 concessions. 33 are dedicated to the third sector, for 258.5 million.

With current legislation, the bill is destined to fall: 90.9 billion in 2028 and 87.6 in 2029. Between 2027 and 2028 the drop is 21 billion, and 19.3 comes from deductions, which go from 59.1 to 39.8 billion: a reduction linked above all to construction bonuses, between the running out of the installments of the old incentives and the lower rates envisaged by the regulations in force for new works.

As for the reorganization strategy, the Budget Structural Plan sets a 15% reduction in revenue loss by 2028 compared to the fiscal expenses in force in 2019, equal to 7.35 billion. The report does not indicate how much of this goal has already been achieved. Instead, it recalls the three interventions on environmentally harmful subsidies launched with the 2025 budget law and the excise duty reform, and strengthened by the 2026 budget: the alignment of the tax treatment of diesel fuel with that of petrol, the revision of VAT on landfill disposal and on incineration without efficient energy recovery, the new percentages for the fringe benefits of company cars. The target linked to REPowerEU, which envisaged at least 2 billion in 2026 and another 3.5 by 2030, was brought forward entirely to 2026 and "redetermined" at 4.5 billion.

For the future, the document indicates some structural guidelines. On the one hand, a "selective review" that gives priority to benefits that are "less effective and/or with a regressive impact" and to those with "elements of fragmentation and duplication" or "a limited number of beneficiaries". On the other hand, the «reorganization of tax breaks, especially in the construction sector and for businesses, aimed at defining a system focused on the ex ante programming and monitoring criteria of incentives, consistently with the objectives of fiscal sustainability». In this direction the report indicates "the launch of the complete census of the tax credits currently in force classified on the basis of the purpose, beneficiaries and methods of use".