Unpaid taxes and duties: the Municipality of Imola is short $1 million. FdI: "There's a serious problem."

Imola, August 11, 2025 – Over one million euros are missing from the municipal coffers , including TARI (over €470,000), IMU (€318,000), ICI (€305,000), and school fees (€56,000) unpaid by residents. This represents a total "residual" of €1.154 million, an item in the municipal budget that represents a sum of money related to revenues accrued from previous fiscal years but not yet collected at year-end.

"A municipality that can't collect the expected revenue is a serious problem," protests Simone Carapia (Brothers of Italy), who obtained the data from the Tax Office, which manages the service jointly for the district. "The ability to collect taxes and fees is fundamental to the functioning of a municipality," the opposition representative points out, "since these resources fund essential public services such as road maintenance, waste collection, street lighting, and much more."

This situation, which apparently has not improved in recent years, "can penalise citizens", warns Carapia, recalling how the decrease in revenue risks leading to cuts in services and an increase in the tax burden on those who pay.

"When those in government talk about cuts, they should remember these substantial sums that aren't collected or 'discharged' with the formal waiver of debt collection," Meloni warned. "This data comes from the service managed by the District, but the detailed analysis isn't contained in a single database but requires extraction and processing from various applications, and this speaks volumes about the efficiency and effectiveness of debt collection."

In Carapia's words , the revenues obtained by the District Tax Office are "the results of the local government's policies, which, in reality, are a completely different story on the radio. We're talking about significant figures," continues the FdI municipal councilor. "And a tax issue remains unanswered, of which the inability to collect municipal taxes is not only a technical issue, but also a purely political one."

According to the opposition figure, the individual local entities dedicated to tax collection "often end up being simply a proliferation of cost centers, databases, and political-electoral undergrowth, without achieving satisfactory results. Even in our region," Carapia concludes, "the situation in this regard can only improve compared to the 'we're the best at everything' narrative of those who govern the city and surrounding areas."