The government has included the bank windfall tax in a wide-ranging package of measures ranging from taxi licenses to foreign investment. According to the agency ANSA, the tax could bring over two billion euros (48.5 billion CZK) to the state coffers. According to Reuters sources, the government expects to collect less than three billion euros in taxes, but some analysts’ estimates are higher.
“You only have to look at the profits of the banks in the first half of 2023, which are also the result of the European Central Bank’s rate increase, to realize that we are not talking about a few million, but billions,” Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini said at a press conference in Rome , on which he appeared without Prime Minister Giorgia Meloniová.
Finance Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti has now announced that the government will relax some of the parameters of the new tax. Above all, a ceiling will be introduced on the amount of the levy, which cannot exceed 0.1 percent of the value of the company’s assets. According to Bloomberg calculations, this means that if the global assets of banks are included in the calculation, the levy will be around one billion euros for the largest Italian financial houses UniCredit Bank and Intesa Sanpaolo.
Italian bank profits surged in the first half as rising interest rates boosted loan income. Last month, banks Sanpaolo SpA and UniCredit SpA raised their full-year outlooks for the second quarter in a row in response to the rapid tightening of monetary policy by the European Central Bank (ECB). Analysts at Bank of America estimate that the Italian bank’s tax could come to two to nine percent of their income.
Shares of Italian banks reacted to the news with a significant drop on Monday. In total, it was a drop in value of roughly ten billion euros. Bank shares have now erased part of the losses, even so the value of Italian banking houses is 6.2 billion euros lower than at the end of last week.
According to XTB analyst Tomáš Cverna, the introduction of a tax on the extraordinary profits of banks in Italy makes more sense than the introduction of this tax in our country. “The reason is that the rise in interest rates in the Eurozone gives banks room to increase net interest income. In the Czech Republic, the tax on extraordinary profits is valid only when the Czech National Bank does not raise rates,” wrote a ČTK analyst.
Reuters already reported in April that the Italian government is planning to tax banks more to finance measures to help families struggling with rising living costs. The economy minister denied such plans in June. The Italian government, including Prime Minister Meloni, has repeatedly criticized the ECB for repeatedly raising interest rates.
2023-08-09 10:46:00
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