意大利新财富税发出强烈信号Italy’s New Wealth Tax Is Sending a Loud Signal

Meloni’s proposed exit tax on wealthy people leaving Italy has an obvious political goal: courting populist voters in her last budget before next year’s general election. The problem is that it has gone down badly with the investors and business leaders whom she needs onside to help solve her county’s financial problems. It’s an unenviable balancing act.

You can see why the Italian prime minister is casting around for quick policy wins. She needs to limit the threat from the far-right National Future party to her bid for a second term, after a surge in popularity for the group led by a hardline former army general.

Polls have shown that Meloni’s right-wing coalition will come in behind the center-left opposition if it doesn’t bring Roberto Vannacci’s “Futuro Nazionale” on board. And that’s a move she and her allies have no intention of making, one of the co-founders of her Brothers of Italy party told Bloomberg last month.

The exit tax is designed as a populist sop to angry Italians, including those tempted by Vannacci, who has outflanked Meloni with more extreme ultranationalist and euroskeptic positions. Her task is all the more urgent after recent protests over the rising cost of living. Milan in particular has seen housing costs surge at the same time as rich individuals have been handed generous tax incentives.

There are a few early signs that Meloni has started to halt the general’s rise. Nonetheless, suddenly becoming less friendly to the wealthy elite is a policy decision that will resonate far beyond the intended audience of disgruntled voters. The proposal has raised concerns among domestic and international investors, a constituency whose confidence Meloni can ill afford to lose. With Italy sitting on a mountain of public debt, maintaining the trust of financial markets, asset managers and corporate bosses is essential.

The prime minister will be fully aware of the danger of the country’s borrowing costs widening when compared with those of Germany, the anchor euro zone economy. Meloni was a junior minister in Silvio Berlusconi’s government in 2011, when a surge in Italian bond yields helped bring down the administration at the height of the bloc’s sovereign debt crisis. That history makes her exit tax gamble all the more striking.

The proposal would impose a 26% tax on unrealized capital gains when people with more than €800,000 ($898,000) in financial assets move their tax residence abroad. The levy, still making its way through parliament, would apply to Italians and long-term residents who have lived in the country for at least six of the previous 10 years. It would likely spare the ultra-rich foreigners who’ve moved to Italy under a flat-tax regime and who keep most of their financial assets abroad.

And it would be peanuts for Italy’s coffers. The government estimates that the new levy will raise €3.4 million next year in a budget worth about €26 billion. That increases to €6.7 million annually over the following four years before falling back to €3.4 million in the long run, according to Bloomberg News.

Yet it has raised an uncomfortable question for chief executives, fund managers and the broader finance community: Is Meloni’s government, after years of presenting Italy as a haven for capital and wealthy investors, starting to drift in a more anti-investor direction?

That doesn’t seem to be the case quite yet. Over four years, Meloni has consistently shown an ability to campaign as an anti-establishment underdog while governing as a pragmatic conservative. The spread between Italian and German 10-year government bonds has widened to well above 100 basis points, compared with a low of around 60 basis points at the start of the year. But that’s far below the roughly 200 basis points when she took office in 2022.

Still, the exit-tax episode shows how an approaching election complicates her job of keeping both sides in harmony. It also demonstrates how these electoral politics might put Italy back on a less stable trajectory.

A plan designed to win back a comparatively small number of populist voters can send a much noisier signal to investors. It’s no surprise that amendments to the tax proposal are now likely after Forza Italia, the pro-business party founded by Berlusconi that’s a junior partner in Meloni’s coalition, called for the measure to be revised.

And beyond all the headlines around the exit tax, there are other more substantial measures that will hurt Italy Inc.

The government’s budget includes a €5.5 billion contribution from the country’s banks, according to a plan approved by the cabinet last month. That has gone down with business leaders as well as you’d expect. The government’s “crazy attitude” will hurt profits across the banking sector, Intesa Sanpaolo SpA Chief Executive Officer Carlo Messina said on a recent conference call.

One source of comfort for Meloni is that the center-left’s investor relations are even worse. Its parties remain divided on issues with significant fiscal and geopolitical consequences, including support for Ukraine. And the left coalition is debating a tax on the richest households, reviving a politically explosive idea in a country where these families hold almost €12 trillion in net wealth.

Leaders of center-left parties attended a conference organized by the CGIL union, whose Secretary General Maurizio Landini proposed asking the 500,000 wealthiest Italians to pay a 1% “solidarity contribution,” which he said could generate €25 billion in revenue. In Italy, too, taxing the rich is becoming one of the main topics on the political agenda — and probably with good reason.

As the election draws closer, both sides will have incentives to sharpen their political messages as they try to win over fractious voters worn down by rising prices and unhappy about inequality. For a country carrying one of Europe’s largest public-debt burdens, however, campaign gestures have consequences that go well beyond the ballot box.