Fascist tax reform slashed inheritance tax revenue by over three-quarters

Evidence

Inheritance tax provided the state with revenue of 305 million in 1922– 1923. When De Stefani’s law exempted 65 percent of inheritance from taxation, the revenue went down to 72 million by 1925– 1926 (La Francesca 1972, 10). With the new law, only transfers outside the family (defi ned as “ascendants, descendants, spouses, siblings, uncles/aunts, nephews/nieces”) were taxed (Gabbuti 2020a, 16). Pantaleoni prepared the study of inheritance tax for De Stefani that reached the following conclusion: “it is desirable to arrive by degrees to the abolishment of inheritance tax” [è perciò opportuno arrivare per gradi alla soppressione totale della imposta successoria] (see Ricci 1939, 94). — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1708

Categorization

• XREF: The swing from 305m to 72m lire in inheritance revenue quantifies the regime’s relocation of the fiscal burden — direct support for the class-weapon reading of austerity. — connects to: Fascist fiscal policy shifted tax burden onto consumption, not wealth — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 1226
• DEEPTHINKING: Only tax data in this chapter so far cleanly quantifies the redistributive direction of fascist fiscal policy: a transfer of tax liabilities from inherited wealth onto workers that is rarely visible this precisely.