Italy threatened with a national property tax

Italy’s new Prime Minister Mario Monti, who was sworn into office on Wednesday of last week, is considering the re-introduction of the country's main property tax - known as ICI - which ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi abolished in 2008.

Berlusconi’s Change is thought to have cost Italy as much as €3.5 billion per annum in lost revenue, former Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti told European Union authorities in a letter sent just before he left office.

And because the majority of Italian wealth is invested "in homes, properties, offices, and other forms of real estate, it's a little frozen", Giovannini said. "How do you get this wealth to produce income and growth? The first hypothesis is a property tax, not a one-off tax, but a permanent one."

While some of the parties supporting Monti's government in parliament have backed re-introducing a property tax, Berlusconi's People of Freedom bloc has opposed it.

Source: OPP.org.uk