Nell’ambito di un Convegno organizzato a Cambridge e finalizzato ad indagare il ruolo e l’incidenza dei tributaristi nelle scelte di politica fiscale, viene dato con il presente contributo un quadro sintetico della situazione italiana, diversa nelle premesse rispetto a quella anglosassone, ma con significativi elementi di comunanza. Il contributo evidenzia la compresenza di molteplici attori nello scenario fiscale, dagli accademici ai giudici, agli esponenti dell’Amministrazione Finanziaria e agli operatori pratici in genere, rivendicando la necessità per gli accademici di recuperare un ruolo centrale, non solo a livello propulsivo-propositivo, ma anche a livello di critica costruttiva nei confronti delle riforme legislative in materia fiscale.
Some remarks on the role of tax scholars and practitioners in developing tax policies Following a conference held in Cambridge that investigated the role and the impact of tax lawyers in the development of fiscal policies, this paper offers an overview of the Italian situation, which is different from the Anglo-Saxon one, but has nevertheless many significant similarities. This contribution clearly shows the involvement of multiple actors (i.e. scholars, judges, tax authorities and practitioners) in the tax scenario, and reclaim the need for tax scholars to recoup a central role, not only in the proactive phase of policy making, but also for a constructive criticism towards legislative reforms in tax matters.
1. Introduction
I would like to share my thoughts on the main topic we are discussing today and, doing this, I wish to focus on some key points. However, it should be stated from the outset that my perspective is that of a country which is part of the European Union, part of the eurozone, and above all it is a country of civil law, with a still strong heritage from the ancient Roman law. For these reasons, I’m afraid my experience can resonate much different than yours.
As regards the main question of our meeting, some distinctions should be made too, because considering only the role played by taxlawyers in tax policy-making may appear too limiting or, in some ways, misleading. Besides, in my country, the majority of academics also performs as taxlawyers, or to a lesser number, as accountants.
In my brief remarks, I prefer however to keep separate the figure of the academics from the practitioners, and to focus in particular on the first one.
As far as the role of academics and practitioners in the tax-policy making, it is a tricky problem indeed and we cannot obviously synthesize it in a few words. If you asked me if over the last 20-30 years academics made a significant contribution to tax-policy making, my first answer would be “no” and only after some deliberation it would be “maybe”, but not to a large extent.
In fact, it seems to me that taxation is a particularly crowded playing field, in which many players play decisive roles.
Who are these players?
2. Politics and politicians
In this regard, I would like to raise a first question: do politicians need both academics and taxlawyers in tax matters? In other words: are they two independent worlds, or are they connected, as in the “law of communicating vessels”? We may think about the possible interactions between academics, taxlawyers and politicians in some very relevant choices of fiscal policy: when a Government claims to adopt a more open-to-business policy by changing the tax rate on corporations; in the tightening up of inheritance tax; in the introduction of a google tax or a flat tax; on the choice between limiting interest deductibility or/and reducing distorsions between the tax treatment of debt and equity, etc.
I should like to point out that, not at the present time, but in the recent past in Italy we had as many as four Ministers of Economics Affairs and Finance who were professors in tax matters (and three of them were also taxlawyers): Franco Gallo (1993-94), Augusto Fantozzi (1995-96), Vincenzo Visco (1996-2001) and Giulio Tremonti (1994-95, 2001-2006 and 2008-2011). That means something, I dare say!
Similarly, various tax law professors were elected to Parliament. Thanks to the combined efforts, among others, of professors Gianni Marongiu (centre-left) and Furio Bosello (centre-right) in 2000 the so-called “Statute of Taxpayer’s Rights” [continua..]
