In this paper we aim to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the fiscal consolidation package adopted recently by the Italian Government in order to achieve a balanced budget by 2013. Revenues are forecasted to increase by more than 3.3 GDP percentage points; these stem mostly from indirect and property taxation. The analysis of the Italian case is interesting since it seems to be consistent with a recent strand of the literature which, in order to foster both short and long-term economic growth, advocated a shift of the tax burden from capital and labour income to consumption and property. Through a set of micro simulation models, this paper evaluates the effects of the Italian fiscal package on households and firms. We show that, in respect of households’ income, indirect and property tax reforms are highly regressive, whilst the reform makes limited resources available for growth enhancing policies (reduction in the effective corporate tax burden). Then, we propose an alternative fiscal package. We show that a less regressive reform on households can be obtained by shifting taxation from personal and corporate income tax to indirect taxation. Our proposal allows the tax burden on firms to be reduced substantially and, in the meantime, offers lower personal income tax rates on households in the lowest deciles of income distribution since they are penalized most by the increase in indirect taxation. JEL-Code: H200, D220, D310.

In recent years a large debate has flourished about plural forms of value added tax (VAT) as a suitable instrument for federal systems and a number of countries have experienced taxes of such a nature. This paper considers a dual form of consumption taxation that was contemplated in the early stage of the European VAT construction. In 1962 the Neumark Report proposed for the European Ecnomic Community a VAT with an harmonised rate, covering all stages up to the wholesale trade, combined with a retail sales tax autonomously administered by each member country. Shortly after, a Commission was set up in Italy to study a reform of the tax system. Professor Cesare Cosciani, who had been a leading member of the Neumark Committee, chaired the Commission. In fact, the final report designed a system of indirect taxation for Italy along the lines sketched out by the Neumark committee. Moreover the structure of the VAT proposed by the Cosciani Report was quite different from the one later adopted in the European Community and would have offered some advantages in the following process of implementing a system of taxation of intra-Community transactions without border controls.

In the literature on fiscal federalism, vertical fiscal imbalance has been widely studied, while the theme of horizontal fiscal imbalance and inequality among local governments, due to differences in their fiscal capacities, has been less explored. This paper contributes to fill the gap. A new method to compute fiscal capacities based on regression analysis is proposed, which can overcome some of the drawbacks of traditional methods such as the representative tax system. This new approach is then employed to evaluate the fiscal capacities of Italian municipalities over the period 2002-2010. Finally two global measures of the horizontal fiscal imbalance are used to evaluate the equity implication of a major policy change occurred in 2008 in Italian municipal finance.

This chapter deals with the issue of sovereign debts in the Eurozone. After a brief discussion of the reasons for their reduction, the different strategies used in the past to this end are considered. It is argued that they either are not viable today or can assure only limited results. Thus, the policy of accumulating primary surpluses seems the only practicable. However, the alternative of restructuring has been investigated with growing attention. Two distinct perspectives have been followed. On one side, a number of proposals deal with the issue of existing debt. There are reasons to doubt that they are substantially different from the policies currently followed. On the other side, several projects are aimed to establish a permanent insolvency mechanism for sovereigns, with the purpose of making effective the no bail-out principle. The question is raised if they are feasible in the absence of any element of fiscal union.