The collection, which is expected to exceed 2,000 million euros, will be used entirely to “support the purchase of mortgages and tax cuts”, they point out from the Executive.
Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, provided through a decree-law approved by the Cabinet a 40% tax on the extraordinary profits of banks that have earned 6% more in 2023 than in 2022.
The collection, which is expected to exceed 2,000 million euros, will be used entirely to “support the purchase of mortgages already the tax cuts”, they point out from the Executive.
The market reaction was immediate, despite the fact that the details and the cost of the tax are not clear. The titles of the big Italian banks have plummeted at the beginning of the session on Tuesday, with the entities losing up to 9,500 million euros of their combined market capitalization.
The shares of the two largest banks in the country, Intesa Sanpaolo and Unicredit, averaged the day with a drop of 8.2% and 7.2%, respectively. Other entities, such as Monte dei Paschi also sink more than 10% after noon. The Italian press compared this new tax with the one approved by the Spanish Government in July last year.
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Ciro De Luca
Income tax: detail of the new standard
According to the standard, it will be activated if the interest margin recorded in 2022 “exceeds the value of the 2021 financial year by at least 3%”, a percentage rises to 6% if 2023 is compared with the previous year. The extraordinary tax instituted for 2023 has a rate of 40%, but the amount, in any case, may not exceed a proportion equal to 25% of the value of the net assets at the end of the year preceding the one in progress on January 1 of 2023. In addition, it is not deductible for the purposes of the income tax and of the iregional tax on economic activities.
The decision took the market by surprise, attentive to the comments of the Government but confident that the Executive would avoid a measure of this type. Meloni had already criticized banks for do not increase interest rates to help small savers, even as it is raising loan rates in parallel with rate hikes from the European Central Bank. At the beginning of August, a senator from the Italian Brothers party had proposed a similar tax but limited to 20% of the profits of the big banks.
Source: Ambito
