Politiche fiscali e di sostegno a carattere regionale per le famiglie con figli

The paper deals with the possibility of using the regional tax system in order to help families with children. The analysis is referred to the Veneto Region in Italy. The regional tax on personal income, the “Addizionale Regionale all’IRPEF”, cannot be very useful as the Regional Authority could only reduce the regional tax rate on personal income from the maximum of 1,4% to the minimum of 0,9%, for all families with children. A regional tax policy of this kind will benefit only the richest families, who’s tax allowances will increase with the level of their income, while the poorest families, those where parents’ incomes are below 29.000 euro, will not have any benefit in terms of tax reliefs. A regional social policy in favour of families with children, that should be characterized by universality, selectivity and equity principles, requires a shift from tax relief to erogation of cash benefits. Our hypothesis is to introduce in Veneto region a particular informatic card called “C.A.R.M.” (Carta Regionale per i Minori) that allows all children below a certain age to receive a specific annual money transfer. The annual amount of the grant credit in the CARM should depend on the family equivalent income and, obviously, on the budget constraint of the Region. An empirical simulation of this policy for the Veneto Region shows that if we would assign an annual grant of 1.000 euro to all children in the first quartile of the family equivalent income, the total cost for the Region will vary from a minimum of 93 million euro to a maximun of 123 milion of euro a year (depending on the distribution scheme).