The additional tax burden that is not seen but is paid

The government denies the increase in tax pressure, claiming that the Irpef reform has reduced the rates, especially for low-to-medium incomes . The opposition, on the other hand, prefers to divert the debate to other areas – the Jobs Act of ten years ago – avoiding denouncing an obvious fact: those earning 35 thousand euros gross or more today pay, in overall terms, more taxes than before. And this is not only due to the effect of fiscal drag, but also due to the fault of local authorities – regions and municipalities – which have increased the Irpef surcharges .

In the last two years, many local governments have been forced to increase their Irpef rates to cope with the surge in current costs. Inflation has raised the price of energy supplies and imposed an adjustment – ​​albeit partial – of public salaries. Regions and municipalities finance the expenditure with their own revenues (IMU, IRAP, Irpef surcharges) and with state transfers. But the transfers are not indexed to inflation, and are no longer enough . We have documented this in another article : in addition to the municipalities, the regions also often pass on to the Irpef surcharges the missed increases in transfers from the national health fund. For this reason, many cities (Turin, Milan, Bologna, Rome, Naples, Bari) have kept the surcharges at the maximum allowed (0.8 percent). Others, such as Ferrara, have adjusted the rates, also affecting the lowest incomes . Among the regions, in 2025 it was the turn of Emilia-Romagna and Abruzzo, while in 2024 Liguria, Molise and Tuscany had increased the regional surcharge to 3.3 percent alongside Lazio, Piedmont and Campania . Other regions will soon follow, faced with the threat of having to cut current spending.

Local increases nullify the much-celebrated reduction in national tax pressure. It is true that, on average, the Irpef rate has dropped for medium-low incomes, also thanks to the introduction of deductions in place of the reduction in the tax wedge. But if you look at the overall tax – national, regional and municipal – the savings evaporate, and in many cases they turn into an increase . Let's take a specific case. In 2025, university professors obtained a 4.8 percent increase to recover, at least in part, the purchasing power lost due to inflation, which between 2022 and 2024 exceeded 17 percent. Let's examine two cases: a full professor and a type A researcher. For the professor, the salary before Irpef goes from about 75,000 to 78,700 euros. But the national Irpef to be paid increases by 6.18 percent, therefore more than the increase in salary. Added to this is an increase in additional taxes: +79 percent regional, +15 percent municipal. Result? The overall average rate (i.e. the share of income that ends up in taxes) goes from 35.87 to 37.78 percent, an increase of almost 2 percentage points : more than half of the increase in the paycheck is thus reabsorbed by the taxman. The joke is twofold, not only do you lose real purchasing power, but you pay more taxes than before: cuckolded and beaten.

For the researcher, the situation is more nuanced. The gross salary increases from 32,900 to 34,400 euros. The tax reform reduces the state Irpef rate by almost one point, thanks to a deduction of 690 euros, and in theory there would be a small net benefit. But the increases in additional taxes - +45 percent regional, +27 percent municipal - absorb almost all the gain . The average total rate remains almost unchanged: from 22.60 to 22.45 percent. In fact, the worker recovers purchasing power only as a result of the contract, not the tax reform . In this case, the joke is only one, the tax burden does not increase, but the loss of purchasing power remains significant: faced with inflation at 17 percent, two years later only a little less than 5 percent of the salary is recovered.

It is time for the political debate to address this issue with the seriousness it deserves . Because tax pressure is not just a question of state rates, but of the overall sum of levies that affect family income. And because we cannot continue to talk about tax cuts if paychecks continue to tell us another truth. One last note: all this applies only to employees and pensioners. The self-employed "flat-rate" workers who only pay the flat tax do not pay Irpef or additional municipal and regional taxes.