The decision of the newly installed Italian government to continue with the dazio consume (that is, a locally imposed duty on retail goods of which a share was passed on to government) as a source of both municipal and central funding led to many distortions in the fiscal map of Italy. Local administrations were divided into four types according to size with the most crucial difference being between those comuni under 8,000 inhabitants, which had to levy excise under the aperto (‘open’) system, and the three levels of comuni chiusi in which the tariffs differed but the method of operation remained the same. In the chiuso (‘closed’) system the dazio was paid on all items as they entered the municipality, whilst in the aperto zone the shopkeeper paid an annual subscription to the authorities, based on estimated turnover, and calculated on a lower set of tariffs.

In 1891, therefore, the 8.3 million people living in the comuni chiusi paid L. 181 millionto the dazio consume authorities, compared with the L. 31.8 million contributed by the 20.7 million people living in the comuni aperti. This imbalance was particularly striking when the respective figures from the share of this revenue passed on to the government are compared (L. 52.5 million from the inhabitants of the chiuso zones, L. 15 million from those living in the aperto districts), given that national government supplied the same service to each group.