There is a magic recipe to earn the praise of Elly Schlein and that is to propose a new tax, especially if it is European. Even if the right does it. You don’t risk criticism but you will be told that you must do it immediately at the national level. And this is precisely the response of the PD secretary to the initiative of some finance ministers who asked the European Commissioner for Climate (yes, I know, it’s funny but so be it) for a “European solution” to the problem. And the solution is obviously a tax on the extra profits of companies. This does not concern those who produce electricity, who have already contributed on the issue with an increase in IRAP. Rather, it concerns the oil companies. Who, for charity’s sake, are making a lot of money. We all see the price at the pump. In the short term, the government confirms the reduction of excise duties.
But these are small change. And they have the usefulness of an ice pack on the head when you have a fever. But putting a surtax on extra profits is nonsense. It would certainly be useless from a revenue point of view. Various governments in the past have tried to introduce the so-called Robin Hood Tax. And on more than one occasion the Constitutional Court has declared them unconstitutional starting from 2015. But in confirming the illegitimacy of these levies, the supreme court even established the principle that if by chance someone paid this unconstitutional tax, they are not entitled to a refund. It is therefore easy to predict that the behavior of the companies could be not to pay and then settle it in court unless the levy was symbolic and therefore useless. This is why the government tries, albeit wrongly, to circumvent the issue by requesting the imposition of the tax at the EU level.
A patch worse than the hole. Because taxes are imposed by those we vote for. “No taxation without representation” say the Americans. So if a minimally rational argument was needed to refute how wrong Elly Schlein was, and it didn’t take much, here it is served. But thinking of solving the problem of the cost of gasoline by adding another tax is wrong for another reason as well. We don’t put crude oil in the tank, but gasoline and diesel. Which are refined products obtained from crude oil. Crude oil alone does not power cars or trucks. An industrial process is needed – refining precisely – that transforms a barrel of oil into finished products. We know that from three barrels of oil approximately two barrels of gasoline and one of diesel are obtained. This ratio allows experts to measure how profitable refining oil is. The indicator is called the crack spread 3-2-1. It roughly measures the gross margin that a refinery obtains by turning three barrels of crude into two barrels of gasoline and one of diesel. When this margin is high – as has happened in various phases in recent years, even exceeding 30 dollars per barrel – refining becomes profitable. Today it is even at 70. Almost the highest in the last five years. But it is not by taxing refineries that you solve the problem. If anything, we should think about why refining oil has become so profitable again today. And here we pay a devastating strategic error: the closure of refineries. From 2009 to today Italy has gone from about 16 refining plants to just over a dozen still operating in the traditional mode. The real bottleneck has therefore become oil refining.
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And these days the problem is worsening thanks to targeted attacks with which Ukraine is destroying Russia’s oil refining capacity. And we do not consider the circumstance that in the coming months American refineries will have to reduce their production levels because oil imported from Canada will decrease due to extraordinary maintenance operations. In conclusion: (1) in the short term we must not impose new taxes even on the hated oil companies and refiners; (2) also in the short term we must reduce excise duties as much as possible to lower the price at the pump; (3) and also in the short term we must start opening new refineries again after having closed them in obedience to the religion of the Green Deal. The left, after having changed its mind on woke, will also repent on this. I accept bets.
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