Perilous
Times
Italy plans to tax Vatican on commercial properties
- The Vatican owns about 25% of all Italy's
properties
Italy's Catholic Church faces an annual multi-million euro bill
over government plans to strip it of its tax-exempt status.
Prime Minister Mario Monti has announced the Vatican must pay
taxes on non-religious property, from which it previously enjoyed
an exemption.
The annual cost could be up to 720m euros ($945m; £598m) according
to municipal government bodies.
Italy's Catholic Church has about 120,000 properties, worth about
10 billon euros.
It includes shopping centres and a range of residential property.
In December, the government reintroduced a tax paid by anyone who
owns land or property in Italy - which the Church does not pay.
But a growing wave of Italians are opposed to what they see as
special privileges in the face of a tightening economy.
Following their government's latest austerity measure package,
more than 130,000 people signed an online petition calling for the
Church's tax exempt status to be revoked.
Since 2005, church-run groups and organisations have not been
classed as official commercial bodies and have been exempt from
paying property tax.
According to the Corriere della Sera newspaper, tax authorities
will calculate how much of a property is used purely for religious
purposes and tax it proportionately.
This means a church would remain exempt but a chapel which
operates an hostel would pay tax accordingly.
Earlier this week, new figures showed Italy has entered recession,
after two consecutive quarters of growth between July and December
2011.