ROME (Reuters) – Italy on Thursday approved a decree preventing the sale of tax credits stemming from works to improve and green up homes, the economy minister said.
“We have decided to stop the effects of a wicked policy that has benefited a few citizens but has placed a burden on each of us from the cradle onwards of 2,000 euro per head,” minister Giancarlo Giorgetti told a news conference after the end of a cabinet meeting.
Under several incentive schemes, Italy allowed homeowners to deduct the cost of the building work from their taxes or sell the tax credit.
The most generous, introduced in 2020 and being phased out, paid an eye-watering 110% of the cost of making buildings more energy-efficient, from insulation to solar panels to replacing old-fashioned boilers and window fittings.
The 110% ‘superbonus’ was introduced in 2020 under a centre-left administration, but the government said it proved too expensive, costing more than 100 billion euros, with only the wealthiest people using it.
Rome also ordered public administrations to stop buying credits related to work that has already begun.
The government’s decision provoked the ire of the opposition 5-Star Movement, the main sponsor of the 110% bonus in 2020, and of some sector lobbies.
Italy’s national building association ANCE said in a statement that the government had decided to “sink families and businesses in the name of unspecified reasoning.”
(Reporting by Giuseppe Fonte and Angelo Amante; Editing by Alistair Bell)
