Italian populist League leader Matteo Salvini has called for the implementation of a 15 per cent flat income tax ahead of next month’s election as the centre-right coalition continues to dominate in the polls.
Salvini called for the 15 per cent flat tax for all Italians as part of his electoral campaign which he has stated he is focused primarily and security issues and economic issues.
“Right now there are 2 million VAT numbers that pay a flat tax at 15 per cent, I would like to extend this flat taxation also to employees. In the space of 5 years, it will be possible to do,” the League leader said, newspaper Il Giornale reports.
“Difficult months await us, I want to be absolutely clear,” Salvini added but stated that he was confident the centre-right coalition, of which the League is a part, will be victorious at the election on the 25th of September.
Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose Forza Italia is a member of the centre-right coalition as well, has also pushed for a flat tax but at a higher rate of 23 per cent.
“When we are in government we will apply a flat tax of 23 per cent, for everyone, families and businesses, to lighten fiscal oppression, to really fight evasion, to increase the revenues of the State,” Berlusconi said in a campaign video.
Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Brother of Italy (FdI), the most popular party in the centre-right coalition and Italy overall in recent polling, expressed concern over Italy’s GDP growth projections and stated that radical change was needed to get the country on track, stating she wished to “free the Italian creative genius, our true inexhaustible resource.”
The economic policies come as all three parties agree on several other major issues, such as stemming the arrival of illegal immigrants, which has grown rapidly this year as more migrants arrived last month than in the entire year of 2019.
Opinion polls put the FdI-League-Forza Italia coalition with nearly 50 per cent of the vote ahead of next month’s election as the Italian left has struggled to form a coalition, with a proposed coalition of the left-wing Democratic Party and the centrist Azione collapsing less than a week after the parties agreed to an alliance.
The centre-right parties have agreed that whichever party gains the most votes will nominate the next Italian Prime Minister, which according to current polls would be firebrand social conservative and noted anti-communist Giorgia Meloni.
Matteo Salvini, meanwhile, has hinted that he may be open to returning as Italian Interior Minister, a position he held in 2018 and 2019. While serving in the role, Salvini was credited for greatly reducing illegal migration as well as drowning deaths in the Mediterranean sea.
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