Illegal estates: who's hiding them from the IRS?

In our cities, there are properties that are not listed on income tax returns but have been showing up for years. These are so-called "ghost" properties - residential buildings or industrial structures, stores, offices, gymnasiums, which are often used and occupied, but remain unknown to the tax authorities.

According to the latest report of the Tax Revenue Agency, their number is 2,009,176 if we count only those owned by individuals and another 1,917,816 if we also include legal entities such as companies, associations or even public institutions. Why these apartments, houses and premises in the bureaucracy of the Tax Revenue Agency''defined as "units not reported in the declaration"? According to the Ministry of Economy, the reasons why they are in this category can vary: they may belong to residents of other countries, there may be errors in the archives of the Cadastre or the Tax Revenue Agency, the owners deliberately do not declare the property to avoid paying taxes, so it could be tax evasion.

The real "ghost" homes are actually a little over a million. There are many categories of real estate, in addition to residential homes, there are also ancillary uses (usually garages), stores, offices, and factories. Only a little over half of the 58.7 million owned by individuals can be categorized as residential, and the real'' The 'ghost' houses that 'do not exist' for the tax authorities amount to 1,035,034. There are also 693,041 warehouse, barn, and garage properties that are not reported on tax returns, as well as 116,756 buildings used for industrial purposes, including both factories and, for example, hotels.

On average, "ghost" properties account for 3.4% of the total number owned by individuals, but this number rises to 15.9% if only the last category, relating to buildings used for industrial purposes, is considered. This number even reaches 26.9% if we consider the ownership of legal entities.

It is obvious that the problem of tax evasion in Italy concerns not only the non-declaration of income and profits, but also the use of real estate. There are''significant geographical differences, especially in Southern Italy there are more "ghost" properties. As in the case of tax evasion, there are also significant differences here, depending on the territory.

The fact that this phenomenon is more common among companies and less common among residential''homes, makes it less pronounced in large cities, where dwellings are much more common than buildings, which tend to be more concentrated in the provinces. However, there are differences even among metropolitan areas. For example, inMilan 1.3% of properties are unknown to the tax authorities, inRome 2.3% and in Naples 5.9%.

What is the value of undeclared residences? Of course, having "ghost" houses means less revenue for the state, since no taxes are paid on them. But what is the total value? Let's consider only residential houses, i.e. properties used for living, and again only those owned by individuals: their tax yield, according to the Tax Revenue Agency, is 304,930,033 euros (this is the estimated''value based on the size of the property, its location and the cadastral category to which it belongs). So: the income from 'ghost' properties amounts to about 51.2 billion euros, not taking into account all the buildings used for other non-residential purposes in the same conditions. This is about 5% of the entire net worth of Italian families.