25 - PUBLIC FINANCE

Contents 

1. Municipal tax on immovable property

2. Revenues and expenditure of the Provincial Administrations

3. Revenues and expenditure of the Municipal Administrations

4. The accounts of Region Lombardia

5. Revenues and expenditure of other public institutions

1. Municipal tax on immovable property

This section refers to municipal taxes on immovable property and contains time series relating the rates and revenue.

In compliance with the legislation, Since March 2006 the data are provided by Foundation IFEL (Institute for Local Economy and Finance).

2. Revenues and expenditure of the Provincial Administrations

The calculation of the balance sheets of the Provincial Administrations relating to 2008 is carried out by Istat on the basis of data supplied by the Ministry of the Interior.

Since 2002 all local bodies must transmit to the Ministry the balance sheet data on paper and electronically. The electronic information must be provided according to a standard format and using a software approved by the Ministry itself. The use of this software ensures that the output data are error-free, thanks to several automatic cross-checks of the various fields of the balance sheet.

The financial data are used to produce the General Report on the Country’s Economic Situation, to calculate the national Economic accounts, and to produce a variety of publications released by Istat.

Data aggregated by region and the total for Italy refer to financial information of 104 Provincial Administrations (only the Province of L’Aquila is estimated). The calculations however exclude the Provincial Administrations of Trento and Bolzano, because they benefit from a special autonomy status and their data are collected through a specific the survey on the Autonomous Regions and Provinces. In region Valle d’Aosta the Provincial Administration is not present and its functions are performed by the Valle d'Aosta Autonomous Region.

Accounting rules

The rules for the preparation of the balance sheet of the provinces for the financial year 2008 are set by Law.

Revenues breakdown into “titles” (according to the origin), into “categories” (according to the nature) and into “resources” (according to the subject).

Expenditures are classified according to two criteria: the economic criterion and the functional criterion. The economic criterion classifies expenditures into “titles” and “interventions”, the functional one into “functions” and “services”.

Within 30 June of every year Every year within the provinces make the financial reporting relating to the previous year.

3. Revenues and expenditure of the Municipal Administrations

Istat also calculates the balance sheets of the Municipal Administrations (Communes). As happens for the balance sheets of the Provincial Administrations, the calculations are based on information provided by the Ministry of the Interior.

The final data are available disaggregated by region and by size class of the municipalities. The most recent data have been calculated according to new procedures, which replace those used in previous years (based on a direct survey on a sample of municipalities).

These new procedures ensure timely information on the final balance sheets of the local administrations, improve the quality of the national accounts estimates regarding the consolidated accounts of the Public Administrations, enable to evaluate the financial flows across different Government levels, and provide information on the administrative decentralization process.

All municipalities must prepare, every year, the balance accounts relating to the previous year, according to a specific structure (set by law in 1998).. The information contained in the accounts covers the main categories of expenditure and revenue and must be provided on paper and, since 2003, also electronically. The electronic information must be provided according to a standard format and using a software approved by the Ministry itself. The use of this software ensures that the output data are error-free, thanks to several automatic cross-checks of the various fields of the balance sheet.

For the financial year 2008, the provisional estimates cover 7.470 municipalities. The generalisation of the data to the universe was based on the population as of 31/12/2008, and was carried out through expansion coefficients calculated for each population class in each region.

4. The accounts of Region Lombardia

The financial data of  Region Lombardia presented in this section of the yearbook are provided by the “Struttura Ragioneria e Bilancio” of Regione Lombardia (Accounting Structure), which belongs to the Organisational Unit for Financial Planning.

The Accounting Structure is responsible for:

• producing the regional financial legislation, the annual balance sheet, and the financial targets of the planning documents;
• managing the accounting of revenues and expenditures and for the financial and accounting control.

The annual balance presents the general framework of the revenues and expenditures expected during the solar year The multi-year balance defines the total resources that Region Lombardi expects to acquire and employ during the three-year period, in order to cover the expected expenditures.

The annual and the multi-year balances are tools for the regional financial planning and are approved through regional Law within 31 December of each year.

5. Revenues and expenditure of other public institutions

The balance sheets of “Comunità Montane” (Associations of Municipalities located in mountain areas)

The balance sheets of the “Comunità Montane” (Associations of Municipalities located in mountain areas) are calculated by Istat on the basis of data that the “Comunità Montane” transmit to the Ministry of the Interior.

The criteria for classification of the revenues and of the expenditures are set by Law (article 114 of Decree n. 77 of 25 February ad Decree n. 194 of 31 January 1996.

Istat carries out formal checking of the data in order to ensure compatibility across the various sections of the balance.

In 2007 the universe of the “Comunità Montane” was made up of 335 units, and only 9 (excluding those located in Sardegna) had not transmitted their accounts. The missing information was estimated on the basis of data relating to similar bodies (in terms of structure and size) located in the same territory.

The data presented do not cover the “Comunità montane” located in region Sicilia, because they have been abolished in 1986 and their financial information is consolidated in the Balance sheets of the provincial administrations.

Several of the 25 “Comunità montane” located in region Sardegna were abolished in 2005 and their functions were transferred to the  Provinces; some were instead transformed into other types of bodies (consortia, unions of communes, etc.). Only seven transmitted their 2007 data, and Istat did not estimate any data for the missing Comunità Montane”.

The balance sheets of the Chambers of Commerce

Data on the balance sheets of the Chambers of Commerce are released by Istat and are calculated according to criteria defined by law (Decree n. 254 of 2 November 2005)

The field of observation of the calculation of the balance sheets of the Chambers of Commerce covers all Chambers operating on the national territory. The information surveyed comprises, in addition to the balance data, also the economic account.

Also surveyed is information relating to the number of employees (both open-ended or fixed-term contracts) at the end of the reference year.