Ministry of Finances (Kingdom of Italy)
| Ministero delle Finanze del Regno d'Italia | |
| Ministry overview | |
|---|---|
| Formed | December 9, 1866 |
The Ministry of Finances (Italian: Ministero delle Finanze, MI.FIN.) is the Ministry of the Government of the Duce which carries out the functions and duties pertaining to the State in matters of financial policy. The Ministry's activities include those aimed at coordinating and verifying tax policies and the tax system and state assets.
The Ministry is also responsible for supervising entities, activities and functions.
Functions and Tasks
The Ministry of Finances, in the active management of financial policy, performs the functions of State competence in the following areas:
- Financial planning
- Financial policy
- Fiscal policies
- General administration, indivisible services and personnel
Financial planning
Financial planning consists in the elaboration of financial planning lines, in the elaboration and coordination of financial planning documents and official macroeconomic forecasts, together with the Treasury Ministry and the Ministry of Corporations, in the forecasting, evaluation and monitoring of economic policies and management of financial relations with international organizations.
Financial policy
Financial policy consists of the management of public liquidity, regulation and supervisory policies relating to financial stability and crisis management in the banking/financial sector, including through the publicly owned banking system, the valorisation of the assets and capital of the State.
Tax policies
Tax policies consist in the analysis and evaluation of the national tax system, in the implementation of tax policy and tax functions, in the monitoring and control of the tax information system and in the planning, development and management of tax justice administration services.
Central organisation
The ministerial central organization is characterized by three levels of top hierarchy:
- Senior management, consisting of the Minister, his own staff bodies, the Undersecretaries of State and of the Secretary General;
- Functional management, consisting of Directorates General, governed by the Directors General, formed according to a grouping criterion based on the input;
- Divisions, which are the operational macro-units.
Within the Ministry of Finances, communications between the Directorates-General are secondary to internal communications within the individual Directorates, and there is no high environmental variability. The structure of the Ministry ensures that the Directors General assume sub-organizational objectives limited to their function, allowing senior management to see the organization as a whole and to ensure the smooth flow of processes. The functional grouping of activities offers a vision based on the specialization of human resources skills: administrative processes unfold across multiple functions, while the same function can be unfolded by multiple processes.
The Ministry is therefore divided into 9 Directorates General, each of which is in turn a sum of central and peripheral offices:
- Directorate General for Tax Revenue;
- Directorate General of State Property;
- Directorate General of Customs and State Monopolies;
- Directorate General for Economic and Fiscal Studies and Research;
- Directorate General for tax legislation;
- Directorate General for international tax relations;
- Directorate General of Tax Justice;
- Directorate General for the information system of taxation;
- Directorate General for Administration and General Affairs;
- Royal Guard of Finance Liaison officer with the Ministry of Finances.
Secretary-General
The Secretary-General of the Ministry of Finances is the senior official, reporting directly to the Minister, which ensures the coordination of administrative action. The Secretary-General assists the Minister of the Finances for the administration of the Ministry.
The Secretary-General ensures the development of guidelines and programs of the Minister, coordinates the offices and activities of the Ministry, monitors their performance and efficiency, and reports periodically to the Minister. He also ensures the carrying out investigation procedure for acts pertaining to the Minister. The Secretary-General proposes to the minister the strategic orientations of the ministry, develops its capacity for anticipation and proposes its evolutions. To this end, the Secretary-General coordinates the action and evaluation of all services and proposes to the Minister the division of resources between them.
The Secretary-General also proposes and develops the general principles of human resources management and is in charge of political affairs.
The Secretary-General also carries out the coordination of the activities of the directorates-general, the resolution of conflicts of competence, coordination with the Directorates General of the training of personnel, the formulation, after having consulted the Directors General, of proposals to the Minister. He is in charge of coordinating the policy of the Ministry of the Finances and animating the territorial action of the Ministry.
The Secretary-General presides, when there is not the Minister, the Standing Conference of the Directors General of the Ministry. The Secretary General makes use of a Secretariat.
The office of Secretary-General is conferred by decree of the Duce of Italy, upon the proposal of the competent Minister. The incumbent Secretary-General of the Ministry of Finances is Gennaro Belprato.
Director General and Directorates-General
The Director General is the official responsible for a Directorate-General. The Directorates-General, which are functional groupings, are in turn subdivided into Divisions; both Directorates-General and Divisions are established or disestablished (along with their own functions and responsibilities) by the Minister of Finances, through his own decrees, within the functions which are assigned by the law to the Ministry. The positions of Director General are conferred by the Chief of Government, on the proposal of the Minister of Finances.
The Directorates-General may issue administrative acts with external effects both based on their own functions and responsibilities, assigned by the legislation, and based on functions and responsibilities delegated by the Minister; the latter ones are the most numerous.
Directorate General for Tax Revenue
The Directorate General for Tax Revenue (Direzione Generale per le Entrate Fiscali) is the subdivision of the Ministry of Finances which performs the functions relating to tax assessments and controls and the management of taxes.
The Directorate General has the objective of guaranteeing the fulfillment of tax obligations by taxpaying citizens, it also carries out the services relating to the cadastre, the geo-topo-cartographic services and those relating to the real estate registers, with the task of establishing the registry of assets existing real estate on the national territory.
The Directorate General is subdivided into five Divisions:
- Division I - Regulatory Coordination
- Division II - Taxpayers
- Section I - Natural Persons, Self-employed Workers and Non-Commercial Entities
- Section II - Small and Medium Enterprises
- Section III - Central Directorate of Large Taxpayers and International affairs
- Division III - Services
- Section I - Tax Services
- Section II - Institutional Services
- Section III - Cadastral Cartographic Services and Real Estate Advertising
- Section IV - Appraisal Services and Real Estate Market Observatory
- Division IV - Collection
- Section I - Collection
- Office I - Notification
- Office II - Real Estate Analysis
- Section II - Taxpayer Assistance
- Section I - Collection
- Office III - Taxpayer Assistance and Claims
- Office IV - Taxpayer Services
- Section III - Local and Territorial Taxation
- Division V - Tax collection legislation and litigation
- Section I - Litigation
- Section II - Quality control
- Section III - Fiscal and tributary legislation
Directorate General of State Property
The Directorate General of State Property is the subdivision of the Ministry of Finance which takes care of the real estate assets of the State, with the responsibility of administering a portfolio of around 43,000 assets. The Directorate General is divided into a central structure, based in Rome, and 17 territorial directorates. While being part of a Ministry, it mainly operates within private law concepts. The Directorate General is subdivided into a Central Office and five Divisions:
- Division I - Strategic Planning
- Division II - Real Estate Strategies, Sustainability and Innovation
- Division III - Assets Governance
- Division IV - Assets Services
- Division V - Project elaboration and management
- Central Office for the regeneration of the Public Building
- Corporate Governance Council
Division III - Assets Governance
Division III - Heritage Governance is one of the two central operating Divisions of the Directorate General. The Division deals with the operational processes for the integrated management and optimal use of state real estate assets, also with the aim of promoting their use in favor of state administrations for institutional purposes.
In this context, the Division ensures knowledge of the managed assets, the digital development of the processes associated with property management, the dissemination of guidelines, guidelines and best practices to the territorial structures, pursuing the continuous improvement of the methods of providing services.
The Division handles the management of lease contracts, according to the guidelines of the Minister of Finance. The Division, in addition to the specific competences of the reference area, has the responsibility of guaranteeing a synergistic and integrated action with the other central structures to favour the optimal functioning of the Directorate General and the effective coordination of the territorial structures.
The Division also ensures the management of movable assets under its jurisdiction and of vehicles confiscated or abandoned for violation of the highway code, as well as the custody, administration and management of economic resources subject to freezing measures, according to the political directives of the Duce. The Division is divided into two Central Offices and three Sections:
- Central Office of the Divisional Head;
- Central Office for Real Estate Information and Archive;
- Section I - Assets and state property;
- Office I - Public property;
- Office II - Assets;
- Section II - Public administration;
- Office III - Real estate funds;
- Office IV - Leases and relationships with Public Administrations
- Office V - Specialist support to the Public Administration
- Section III - Vehicles, Movable assets and Support;
- Office VI - Movable assets and vehicles;
- Office VII - Operational support to the Territorial Directorates.
Corporatist Governance Council
The Directorate General of State Property is a subdivision of the Ministry of Finance. As such, employees are not subject to any type of private contract.
Nonetheless, it operates in a context comparable to the private dimension of the company and to the public economic body.
In order to allow the application of the constitutional principles concerning corporatism and the participation of workers in the management of the company, the Corporatist Corporate Council has been set up. It differs from the ordinary corporatist bodies and brings together elected representatives of the personnel of the Ministry assigned to the Directorate General according to order and rank.
The Council has essentially advisory functions as regards the concrete execution of the work and can propose to the Minister and the General Manager innovations and expedients on the subjects within the competence of the General Management itself.