The Catholic Church should pay tax on commercial property it owns in Italy, an Italian government minister was quoted yesterday as saying amid rising calls for the Vatican to share in debt crisis sacrifices.
“The Church should pay the IMU for commercial activities,” said Cooperation and Integration Minister Andrea Riccardi, who is also the founder of the influential Catholic community Sant’Egidio, Italian newspapers reported.
Mr Riccardi was referring to a municipal property tax that is part of draconian austerity measures put forward this week by Prime Minister Mario Monti, who has asked Italians to endure tax hikes to avoid the state going bankrupt.
The minister added, however, that there should be no “big confrontation” between Church and state on the issue of taxes, adding: “It’s better to verify on a case by case basis and intervene only if there has been bad faith.”
The Italian Catholic Church pays tax on several properties it owns that are commercial enterprises but is exempt if at least some of the activities on the property are “non-commercial” – for example a chapel in a hotel.
The extra revenue from these exempt properties – including hotels, restaurants and sports centres could be €25.5 million a year in Rome alone, La Repubblica daily reported, citing official figures.
The French restaurant Eau Vive near the Pantheon in the heart of Rome and the four-star hotel Ponte Sisto are both exempt, the newspaper said.
The Church has defended itself saying that many of its properties have charitable purposes – including soup kitchens and community centres.
“The Church gets exemptions like all non-profits. They are not privileges,” Giuseppe della Torre, a senior Vatican judge, was quoted by Corriere della Sera as saying.
But an online petition set up in recent days for the Church to pay up has already gathered more than 70,000 signatures and the number is growing.
Properties that belongs to the Vatican itself are exempt from Italian taxes altogether as they are considered part of a sovereign state under the Lateran Accords signed between Italy and the Holy See in the 1930s.