When the reporters asked him about the super bonus, during the press conference at the end of the year, the president Mario Draghi seemed to be waiting for nothing else. In less than three minutes, with great clarity, has explained because in the discussions on the budget law the government had proposed to correct the tax relief for renovations that improve the energy efficiency of houses and condominiums. The main problems indicated by Draghi are two, rather difficult to object: the super bonus has caused an extraordinary increase in the prices of building materials and encouraged fraud. “They were good reasons for [spiegare] the government’s reluctance to extend the superbonus, ”said Draghi.
The super bonus 110% was introduced in 2020 by the second Conte government, supported by the Democratic Party and the 5 Star Movement. With this measure, the government has committed to reimburse, and indeed pay a small surcharge, for a very wide range of residential building renovations. On paper, the measure had several objectives, including: giving citizens the opportunity to renovate their homes for free; reduce the cost of bills and increase the value of homes; encourage the construction sector, but also support employment and make homes warmer in winter and cooler in summer, guaranteeing savings for families and fewer emissions into the atmosphere.
To do all this, however, the state has spent a lot of public money. Too many, according to many experts: the last ones data of ENEA, the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, say that as at 31 December 2021, 16.2 billion euros of investments related to the super-bonus were allowed, of which 4.3 billion euro only in the last month, when it had become clear that the Draghi government would at least reformulate it. The state plans to invest a total of € 31.77 billion until 2026.
The government had proposed some changes, such as the exclusion of houses and the introduction of an access threshold for families with an ISEE (the indicator used to frame the income of families) of up to 25 thousand euros, to help only people with a low average income.
The request was not accepted, and the superbonus has barely been revised: the subsidy, which expires at the end of 2021, has been extended until 31 December 2022 for those who will complete at least 30 percent of the work by June. Furthermore, for condominiums, the superbonus will remain at 110% until the end of 2023, then it will drop to 70% in 2024 and stop at 65% in 2025. Parliament – above all the Movimento 5 Stelle, the relative majority party, who pushed hard to renew the superbonus without changes – in short, he decided to extend the generous concession without changing the rules that caused many “distorting effects”, as they were defined by Draghi.
The Prime Minister has listed only two, the most obvious, but for some time economic experts and insiders had also identified others that in the coming months or even years could have consequences on the construction market and on the job: in addition to cost a lot to the State, the superbonus is considered unfair because it favors the wealthy segments of the population, seems to bring limited benefits in terms of emissions saved, has drugged the market and favored the birth of many small construction companies, often improvised, with non-negligible risks for safety at work.
The first and most pronounced distortion was the extraordinary increase in the prices of building materials. Since the beginning of May, with the resumption of construction sites after the closures due to the epidemic, the superbonus has contributed to increasing the demand for wood, steel, concrete and scaffolding. With little material available on the market, the price has risen rapidly: the result is that you renovate a house it has never cost this much. ISTAT data also confirm this.
But the increase in prices, indicated by Draghi as a problem, does not seem to worry taxpayers and businesses too much. The reason for this lack of interest is very simple: with a concession that fully covers the costs, there is no longer any negotiation between those who commission the works and those who carry them out.
Families and businesses have no reason to negotiate on prices or to choose the cheapest quote because the state pays for everything and even more. “Excessive generosity makes the scheme inefficient, since, by eliminating any conflict of interest between property owners and construction companies, it leads to an increase in the cost of energy savings”, has explained Giuseppe Pisauro, economist and president of the Parliamentary Budget Office.
Then there is the question of fraud. In 2021, the Revenue Agency blocked four billion in credits related to building bonuses, including the superbonus. It is only the result of the first investigations, to which must be added the investigations of the Guardia di Finanza which have reconstructed complex systems with which professionals and companies have obtained credits for false invoices. According to Sole 24 Ore, that has explained the fraud model, the concessions have attracted the attention of companies attributable to people linked to the Camorra and the ‘Ndrangheta, who buy tax credits to launder dirty money.
In addition to the increase in prices and fraud, one of the most important problems of the superbonus concerns the beneficiaries of the concessions, that is, those who actually get the opportunity to take advantage of all this public money. Analyzes of the results of pre-superbonus deductions, such as the 50 percent restructuring bonus, showed that these measures are generally unfair: more than half of the public money invested in deductions went to the top 15 percent of taxpayers. From the first data, it seems that the distribution for the superbonus is very similar.
The disproportion can also be seen in the first data relating to the type of renovated houses: in May 2021, out of over 1.3 billion euros in deductions, over two thirds went to properties in the cadastral category A1 (stately home), A2 ( residential type) or A7 (small villas): not exactly the type of house in which the less wealthy sections of the population live. “The distributive effects of the measure are clear and for this reason the government had proposed to put an ISEE access ceiling of up to 25 thousand euros”, explains Francesco Figari, professor of Finance at the University of Insubria.
With a concentration of interventions in the highest cadastral categories and the general increase in prices, the risk is that the benefit in terms of energy efficiency is lower than the costs incurred. In other words: the buildings affected by the measure are not very many. So far, the superbonus has served to make less than 1 percent of homes and condominiums more sustainable.
Figari argues that with these methods the real benefit in terms of energy efficiency will be very limited, in the face of costs that continue to increase: “We are talking about over 31 billion until 2026. We should ask ourselves if this is the best possible alternative use of these economic resources. At the moment it is a private benefit paid entirely by the public ».
(Joshua Mancini/Unsplash)
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It would also be useful to understand what the effects of the superbonus are on the construction sector, which has received significant support from the concessions. Although the push is undeniable – just try to ask for a quote to realize how busy companies are between now and the next few months – there are still many problems and underestimated consequences.
The construction sector has reached the superbonus after years of crisis in which employees and professionalism had been lost. In recent months there has been a rush to find new workers to be hired quickly to respond to customer inquiries. Many small companies were born, often improvised, made up of an employer and one or two employees, with the aim of not letting this income opportunity slip away. “As always, when there is a hurry, the degree of preparation and experience of the new workers is not sufficiently considered”, explains Federico Bellono, secretary of the CGIL of Turin with responsibility for health and safety. In recent months in Turin, as in other Italian cities, there have been many accidents on construction sites. One of the last caused the death of three workers who were assembling a crane.
Even the tight deadlines for obtaining the concessions, although they were then lengthened by Parliament, contributed to the increase in risks. According to Bellono, the superbonus has aggravated some negative effects already evident in the sector: the use of subcontracts, poor training, limited investments for safety at work, insufficient controls. “As you go down into a hypothetical pyramid of contracts and subcontracts, everything becomes less controllable and less controlled,” he says. “With haste, everything gets worse and the risk of accidents at work increases.”
Even one of the most emphasized advantages for employment, the emergence of undeclared work, is unsustainable: no company should make employees work illegally, because all costs are borne by the state. But with 110% concessions, even this benefit is probably outweighed by the enormous costs.
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