By Angelo Amante, Federico Maccioni and Giuseppe Fonte
ROME (Reuters) -Italy has approved a one-off 40% tax on profits banks reap from higher interest rates and it plans to use proceeds to help mortgage holders, in a move that sent banking shares plunging.
Sharply higher official interest rates have yielded record profits for banks, as lenders were able to hike the cost of loans while holding off paying more on deposits.
Countries such as Spain and Hungary have already imposed windfall taxes on the sector.
Only for 2023, Italy will tax 40% of banks’ net interest margin, a measure of income banks derive from the gap between lending and deposit rates.
Rome expects to collect less than 3 billion euros ($3.29 billion) from the measure, sources close to the matter told Reuters.
However, some analysts’ estimates were higher.
Top Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo at the end of last month said it expected to pocket more than 13.5 billion euros this year from its net interest margin alone.
Analysts at Bank of America estimated the new tax could cost banks between 2%-9% of their earnings.
Italy’s banking index plunged 6% by 0757 GMT.
The country’s right-wing government had repeatedly criticised banks for failing to pass on to depositors the higher cost of money, but took action only after the latest round of record earnings reported by banks at the start of August.
All main Italian lenders reported much stronger than expected results and upgraded their profit outlook thanks to the boost from higher rates.
“One has only to look at banks’ first-half profits … to realise that we are not talking about a few millions, but … of billions,” Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini told a news conference in Rome late on Monday.
“If (it is true that) the burden deriving from the cost of money has … doubled for households and businesses, what current account holders receive has certainly not doubled,” Salvini said, adding there was a large gap between the rates applied to loans and deposits.
($1 = 0.9112 euros)
(Additional reporting and writing by Valentina Za; Editing by Keith Weir and Susan Fenton)
