Dall’Iri ai regimi sostitutivi: profili critici e spunti per una riforma dell’imposta sui redditi delle persone fisiche

The Budget law for 2019 marks a turnaround in the fiscal policy concerning taxation of individual entrepreneurs and self-employed persons. The Budget law has repealed the tax on entrepreneurial income (so called IRI) and extended the flat tax based substitute regimes for individual entrepreneurs and self-employed persons. These regimes openly derogate to both the progressivity of the general income tax (IRPEF) and the neutrality of the VAT (whereas the Iri substantially stuck to the former and did not touch upon the latter). However, such irrational and unreasonably widened derogation to the progressivity prin- ciple result in an unequal distribution of public burdens, which in turn under- mines the solidarity linkage which our society is rooted upon. This article explains why this reform is detrimental to the Italian tax system, both from an efficiency and from an equity perspective. The rationale of the repealed Iri is compared to that of the substitute regimes, both from a juridical and an economic perspective; and it is demonstrated that the former has been designed in such a way to generously favour certain taxpayers vis-à-vis the taxmen and the other taxpayers. In conclusion, this article puts forward some proposals for correcting this bias and making the income tax more equal and efficient.