The European Union has asked to remove the state TV license fee from electricity bills as a disruptive voice that changes its value, and the government seems inclined to implement the change, so much so that on April 16 it passed the Agenda approved on the Energy Decree presented by Mixed Group MEP Maria Laura Paxia, proposing to separate the electricity bill from the television tax. The question remains as to which method of payment should be used from 2023 onwards.
The different payment methods
Looking abroad, there are several methods. In France, for example, a house tax; in the UK and Switzerland, the collection of license fees for state television, entrusted to collection agencies; Paid as road tax in Israel. An alternative that has been adopted by Spain, Belgium, Russia, Hungary and Norway, for example, to completely abolish the RAI fee. What is certain is that there will be no return to the pretax mode on electricity bills, when a persuasion campaign urged Italian families to pay. A decision that took the 2014 budget to catastrophic levels, with 27% of households evading the tax, between 2011 and 2014 some 500 million in revenue was stolen from state television.
A voice out of 730
The most plausible path among the options available to Prime Minister Mario Draghi seems to be the French one. Since 2005, the TV license fee has been levied in France as an additional tax on the first home, payable between 15th and 25th November each year, at 138 euros (90 in Italy). In Italy it could become an item of 730, the model for tax returns for employees and pensioners. However, the final verdict will come with the next budget law in December 2022, even though the country is also close to the 2023 general election.
Is eliminating the fee an option?
Getting rid of the Rai royalty permanently might be the easiest and most painless option. The Scandinavian nations, for example, have been opting for this for years. However, the money comes from households and businesses that pay general taxes for the year without any particular item being recognized. In Italy, the state check that the government is expected to pay Rai from 2019 would amount to around 1630 million. This regulation would allow public television to also counteract the evasion of the special fee, the tax that offices, companies, restaurants, hotels are called upon to pay and which is currently still being evaded significantly: in 2019, the income of the Rai from the special fee was 85 .1 million euros, in 2020 (first year of the pandemic) only 61.