Il costo dei tributi. La gestione delle attività tributarie locali

Taxes have a cost. It concerns their management that, starting from late Nineteenth Century, is organized by Italian law in outsourcing. It is most often local authorities that are resorting to private providers for the assessment, liquidation and collection of taxes. Central government, on the other hand, uses a public company (Equitalia S.p.A.), which has acquired functions previously carried out by concessionaires (operating under the framework of legislative decree no. 112/1999). The management of local taxes is thus characterized by the existence of a widely regulated market, dominated by the coexistence of different providers (public and private). «Fiscal outsourcing» raises different kind of problems. First, that of the applicable law, due to the difficulty in defining providers, fiscal activities, and the legal nature of the relations between authorities and individuals. Second, that of the compliance, by private providers, with administrative rules and guarantees set for citizens. Finally, that of the presence of different regimes pertaining to market access and maintenance of market presence. More precisely, existing privileges for public providers (such as Equitalia S.p.A.) function to the detriment of private ones. Key issues relate to the true existence of costs, as well as to the problem of the efficiency of outsourcing norms. These points, indeed, present many critical issues. At last, they reveal that also public administrations «pay the taxes».