The tax disappears for approximately 14.5 million vehicles. From public budgets, however, it cannot evaporate. The draft that arrived on the table of the Council of Ministers provides for the exemption for 2027 on cars up to 80 kW, around 109 horsepower, and on all motorcycles, with an important limit: each natural person will be able to benefit from it for only one regularly insured vehicle.
Giorgia Meloni presented the measure as the cancellation of “one of the most hated taxes by Italians”. The bill, in the meantime, has already appeared: 2.2935 billion euros in lower revenue. The draft envisages transferring the same sum to autonomous Regions and Provinces. However, the immediately following step is missing: from which item of the state budget will that money come?
The 7.5 billion are all the stamp duty, this exemption is worth 2.3 billion
In recent weeks, a figure of between 6.5 and 7.5 billion euros per year had circulated around the stamp duty. The number has a real basis, but it tells something else. According to the ACI Statistical Yearbook, in 2024 the car tax generated around 7.5 billion euros in revenue. It is the value of the entire pie, not that of the slice cut by the measure.
The exemption contained in the draft in fact concerns cars up to 80 kW, all motorcycles and only one vehicle for each natural person. Those who own two vehicles will not automatically stop paying for both. The most powerful cars will remain outside and, for now, the provisions only concern payments due between 1 January and 31 December 2027.
The specific estimate, therefore, exists and is much lower than the overall revenue: 2.2935 billion euros. Not a little, of course. But not even the 6 or 7 billion evoked when talking about total abolition.
There remain some knots in the released numbers. The previews speak simultaneously of “over 70% of the cars currently in circulation” and of approximately 14.5 million vehicles in total, including motorcycles. The ACI Statistical Yearbook 2026 records a fleet of almost 41.8 million cars: 70% would therefore be a much larger audience.
The two percentages may use different denominators. On the one hand there may be models compatible with the power limit; on the other, the exemptions that can actually be used, after applying the restriction of only one vehicle per natural person. The definitive text will be needed to understand how those 14.5 million were built. Adding up different advances and hoping they come back on their own would be a rather creative form of accounting.
The small detail: that money goes mainly to the Regions
Then there is a less flashy issue of an “abolished tax”, but decidedly more weighty. In the Regions with ordinary statute, the revenue from the car tax has been paid to the Regions since 1993; since 1999 they have also been responsible for assessment, collection, recovery, sanctions, reimbursements and litigation. For special autonomies the system changes, with its own taxes and different sharing.
The first entity that would see the revenue disappear, therefore, is not generically “the State”: it is above all the regional budgets. And this is where advertising meets accounting.
The draft addresses this first step by providing, “for the purpose of contributing to the adjustment of the budgets of the regions and autonomous provinces of Trento and Bolzano”, an overall transfer of 2,293.5 million euros for 2027. The estimated loss and compensation coincide. The Regions, at least on paper, would receive from the State what they will no longer collect from motorists. However, the lost billion continues to be a lost billion. He simply changed his address.
The passage is even more curious because the system has just been rewritten. Legislative decree 147 of 7 August 2026, republished in the Official Journal on 4 September, contains an entire section dedicated to car tax, with new rules on collection, rentals, vehicles sold, tariffs and concessions. Twelve days later a maxi-exemption arrives. The stamp has just received a regulatory review and is already preparing to lose several customers.
The compensation is there, the coverage is not yet
We need to distinguish two boxes that only look the same when viewed from afar. The first concerns compensation: how much will local authorities receive for lost revenue? The answer contained in the draft is 2.2935 billion. The second concerns coverage: where will the State get those 2.2935 billion from? In the available documents this answer does not yet appear.
We cannot therefore write that a new tax will arrive, that certain expenses will be cut or that the cost will be loaded onto another tax. It would be putting coverage ahead of the norm. Accounting possibilities include a reduction in other expenditures, the use of increased revenue already acquired, the shifting of appropriations, or a change in transfers and tax sharing.
The rule is clear. The Chamber of Deputies recalls that even a reduction in revenue constitutes a financial burden: when a law causes the public administration to earn less, that loss must be quantified and covered. Article 81 of the Constitution also establishes this: every law that entails new or greater burdens must indicate the means to deal with them.
Furthermore, from 2027, the new structure of fiscal federalism introduces a sharing of IRPEF revenue and an equalization mechanism for the Regions with ordinary statute. However, that sharing serves to replace state transfers already foreseen. It’s not a box of money left casually free for stamp duty. If it is modified to also absorb this operation, it must be written in the standard.
The motorist saves, the budget must find the money
The measure, if confirmed in the final text, will produce concrete savings for millions of car and motorbike owners. The draft also allows us to abandon the calculations made by taking the entire revenue from the stamp duty: the operation is estimated at 2.2935 billion euros for 2027, with compensation of the same amount intended for local authorities.
The last line is still missing. The one that indicates the chapter from which the State will take the resources necessary to carry out the transfer. The motorist will see one less tax. The Regions should receive compensation. The state budget, however, will have to find 2.3 billion. The tax could disappear from the wallets of 14.5 million owners; from public accounts, as expected, a little less.
