According to a survey by Confcommercio, Italians aspire to live in neighborhoods where there are local shopsbecause they strengthen communities, make people feel safer and increase home values. The number of shops, however, is constantly decreasing. And politics – national and local – cannot continue to ignore this enormous problem.
Confedilizia has long put forward two proposalswhich do not claim to be definitive but which would certainly help to make some progress.
1. The first is the introduction of the flat-rate tax for non-residential rentals. The government has foreseen it as part of the tax reform and Parliament has ratified it in the delegation law approved a year ago. Now, however, it must be implemented. In the current situation, in fact, the rent is burdened – directly or indirectly – by a series of taxes (Irpef, regional Irpef surcharge, municipal Irpef surcharge, Imu, registration tax) which together lead to the erosion of a large part of the income foreseen by the contract. A proportional tax, instead, a flat tax similar to the one foreseen for thirteen years for residential leases, would make these investments more attractive. What are you waiting for to act?
2. The second proposal is the liberalization of commercial rental contractshindered by a regulation dating back almost half a century (the fair rent law of 1978), which imposes infinite durations and counterproductive rules such as the one regarding the start-up allowance. It is time to remove this real obstacle to the meeting between the parties. Ten years ago, in 2014, the parties were allowed by law – limited to leases with an annual rent exceeding 250 thousand euros (even if the original text contained the figure of 150 thousand, later increased in Parliament) – to regulate the terms and conditions of the relationship by agreement, in derogation of the fair rent law, thus “fully valorizing private autonomy”, the same report said.
And other sentences in that report sound mocking, considering the time that has passed without that possibility of derogation being extended. “The current regulation – explained the government document – dates back for the most part to the original law on fair rent (law no. 392 of 1978) and, despite some reform interventions, continues to present significant shortcomings. elements of rigidity that have no equal in the main European countries. The evolution of the economic system has also led to the realization that the original needs for protection, which a priori saw the tenant as the “weak contractor”, have been largely overcome”. And again: “The current binding discipline limits the freedom of the parties to freely regulate the relationship, predetermining it in many essential elements (for example, constraints on duration, mandatory cases of withdrawal by the tenant, limitations on the possibility of freely foreseeing the methods of rent revision, mandatory cases of pre-emption, etc.).
Such rigidities make investments less attractive. in the Italian market compared to foreign markets and constitute a brake on the development of the commercial rental market and of properties for tourist use”. The question is: do we finally want to get out of the dirigisme of the Seventies?
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