Matteo Salvini used a visit to a Rome construction site recently to confirm that his League party will ask parliament for a three-year levy on the country’s ten largest banks. He wants an annual 5% contribution, calculated once sector profits reach roughly €30 billion.
Intesa Sanpaolo and UniCredit alone reported combined first-half profits close to €12 billion, putting the pair on course for more than €24 billion this year.
Public finances remain stretched, and Italians return to the polls before the current parliament’s term runs out. The 2026 budget already drew close to €6 billion from banks and insurers through a set of separate tax rises. Salvini now wants a sharper, more concentrated contribution once that arrangement expires.
Foreign minister Antonio Tajani, his own coalition partner, has already dismissed the underlying premise as a throwback to the Soviet Union. The disagreement, revived at the start of budget season, says more about the coalition governing Italy than about banking policy on its own.
Rome’s Recurring Argument
Tajani’s objection carries history rather than novelty, since similar language surfaced during the 2023 windfall tax and again through last year’s budget talks.
Salvini had then proposed a 40% levy on banks’ net interest income, a move that sent European bank shares tumbling within a day of the announcement. Rome capped the measure within twenty-four hours, limiting it to 0.1% of each lender’s assets.
Tajani used a recent interview with an Italian daily to restate his objection in sharper language, warning that “quasi-Soviet crusades against windfall profits” would frighten investors instead of helping households. He pressed instead for a voluntary contribution, negotiated with lenders rather than legislated by decree.
What the Profit Shows
Tajani’s economic case rests on how banking profit gets measured, a question economists at Bocconi’s Institute for European Policymaking have examined directly. Their comparison of Italy’s twenty largest listed companies found an average return on equity of 15.25% in 2024, with the six banks in the sample posting 15.56%, close to the wider corporate average.
Weighed against banks’ higher cost of equity, driven by regulatory and fiscal uncertainty, that return looks unremarkable. Ordinary profitability, dressed up as a windfall, becomes a harder case to defend once the underlying numbers get published.
Capital, Credit And Market Nerves
Bocconi’s research questions fairness – the European Central Bank raised a related concern in 2023 about stability.
The bank warned that a sudden levy could squeeze the capital buffers lenders rely on during a downturn, hitting smaller, lending-focused institutions hardest.
Retained earnings build resilience, and a levy calculated on profit rather than genuine excess reduces exactly this resilience.
Investors read sudden fiscal moves as a sign of policy unpredictability, and unpredictability tends to raise the price lenders pay to borrow.
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