CNA: in 2015, companies had to pay 1 billion too much for the waste tax (Tari)

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Companies were forced to pay twice for the disposal of their waste. The CNA demands a norm able to stop this imposition.

A billion in 2015 alone: according to the estimates of CNA (the Italian national confederation of craftsmanship and small/medium enterprises), this is the amount of the tax waste that enterprises had to pay on waste they had already disposed of. This problem is due to the illegitimate application of the waste tax, whose purpose would be to cover the expenses faced by municipal administrations for the public waste collection service. However, many municipalities use this tax as a cash machine that producers and manufacturers are constantly forced to feed.

This situation is not new. The tax changed many names, Tarsu, Tia, Tares, and now Tari, but the problem remains. Several municipalities, according to the CNA report, demand the payment of this tax even for special waste that enterprises dispose of through private collection circuits, with a procedure that is both eco-friendly and compliant with EU norms.

“Over the past few years, several attempts were made to correct this situation, but they were not strict enough: municipalities are still free to act arbitrarily – adds the report of the association – The 2014 Stability Law, which established the Tari tax, is itself contradictory. On the one hand, it rightfully exempts from the tribute the waste that producers prove to have already sent for disposal. On the other hand, it establishes that municipalities may reduce the tariff to be paid in proportion to the share of waste that producers already sent for disposal. This basically affirms the existence of a double tax to be paid. Not even a later change made by the Ministry of Economy could solve this problem.”

Now the CNA requested a new modification of this norm with two main aims: the first is to explicitly prohibit municipalities to impose the tax on waste that producers already disposed of. The second is to obligate local authorities to respect the EU directive which puts reusing, recycling and recovering at the top of the hierarchy of waste disposal, and allows landfill dumping only as last option.