Italian far-right taxed the financial sector on excess profits

Today, Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who heads the far-right League party, announced that the country’s coalition government decided to impose a one-time 40% tax on “multi-billion dollar excess profits of banks.”

Following the results of last year’s parliamentary elections in Italy, the victory won three parties: the “Brothers of Italy”, professing the principles of “national conservatism” – its leader, George Meloni, became the country’s prime minister; the far-right populist “League” led by Mr. Salvini; conservative “Forward, Italy!”, which, after the death of its leader Silvio Berlusconi, was headed by his longtime supporter Antonio Tajani, who took the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs in the government.

The current Italian cabinet considered that Italian banks are making extremely high profits due to the increase in ECB discount rates this year, thus earning on citizens. “It is enough just to look at bank profits in the first half of this year, which were the result of the ECB’s policy, to understand that we are not talking about a few million, but about billions,” Matteo Salvini emphasized. “If it turns out that what is true for citizens and businesses the cost of loans has risen and doubled, but for those who lend money, this is not entirely true.

According to the results of the first quarter, one of the largest banks in Italy and the EU, Unicredit received net profit of €2 billion, and according to the results of the second quarter – €2.3 billion.

According to sources Reutersthe Italian government expects to receive about € 3 billion from the tax on banking excess profits by the end of the year. Mr. Salvini said that the authorities intend to use the funds received from banks to help problem mortgage borrowers and reduce taxes for citizens.

Today’s statement by the Italian government was an unpleasant surprise for both analysts and stock markets – shares of Italian banks fell in price by 6-9%. “The tax announced today in Italy came as a surprise and raised fears that other countries might follow suit,” he told the TV channel. CNN Stuart Cole, an economist at the London brokerage Equiti Capital.

Read about how superprofits are withdrawn from Russian companies in the material “Kommersant” “Extra-effort for an overtax”.

Evgeniy Khvostik