“In the last year, many measures have changed the main lines of the Italian tax system in the right direction, but there are still delays in defining important institutes, not all the results have been fully achieved and the global design still suffers from second thoughts and contradictions".
The president of ASSONIME said it, Maurice Sella, speaking today in Milan at the annual conference of Assolombarda and Assonime. Among the most positive elements of the current evolution, Sella indicated the regulatory interventions on the subject of legal certainty and the introduction of the institution of cooperative compliance, which however "still remains of uncertain attractiveness for companies as emerges from the limited number of subjects who have currently adhered to it".
"Steps forward - continued the President of ASSONIME - have also been made for the more rational arrangement of preventive interpellations, for the redefinition of the international ruling, for the extension of the terms for the active repentance and for the rectification of the errors committed by the taxpayer".
Even the reform of the criminal sanction system, which led to the decriminalization of the so-called interpretative evasion, represents an important step which is now waiting to be correctly implemented in the application practices. On the other hand, the issue of the crime report still remains open: in this regard, it seems that the tax offices continue to transmit crime reports also with regard to taxable income deviations which, despite exceeding the quantitative thresholds set by the law, originate precisely from the decriminalized cases.
"In addition to increasing the workload of the prosecutors - underlined Sella - this continues to produce considerable reputational damage for the companies involved". Another element of uncertainty is connected to the recent introduction of the crime of self-laundering, also extended to predicate crimes of fiscal origin. The scope of application of this case is not yet clear, with particular regard to tax crimes characterized by an illegitimate tax saving which is then "re-introduced" into the business activity.
ASSONIME expressed its full appreciation for the reduction of the IRES rate to 24%, the enhancement of corporate welfare and the tax credit for research and development, the introduction of the VAT group discipline, whose entry into force was however postponed again to 2018; on the other hand, the step backwards taken, for reasons of revenue, on the VAT system of credit losses is unreasonable from a systematic point of view. On the subject of insolvency proceedings, President Sella took the opportunity to point out, more generally, that the average duration of such proceedings in our country is far greater than that existing in other countries and this leads to "an increase problem loans that remain in the creditors' assets, consequently placing them in a situation of profound disparity compared to the other European competitors".
A separate chapter concerns companies with an international vocation and, more generally, the challenges that the process of globalization and the digital economy are bringing to the traditional institutions of the tax system. Sella, while appreciating the measures regarding rulings, branch exemptions, patent boxes and the elimination of limits on the deductibility of black list costs, nevertheless underlined that areas of uncertainty remain, especially on the issues of CFC, foreign investment, permanent establishments hidden, beneficial owner and transfer pricing.
Finally, the president focused on the problems that arise from the modern organization of the multinational group, no longer formed by a plurality of autonomous companies located in different territories but constituted as a single transnational entrepreneur who, under a unitary direction, distributes the different phases of the activities (research, production, marketing and sales) based on market logic and also on criteria of fiscal convenience.
In particular, this organization, now typical of all industrial sectors and completely legitimate on a legal and economic level, has however also favored the development of aggressive tax planning aimed at segregating taxable income in countries with low taxation, dissociating it from its sources of production . Sella recalled the projects being discussed at the European Union and OECD level to deal with the phenomenon, in a process that is far from simple to implement also because it is linked to the underlying theme represented by the unstoppable affirmation of the digital economy, which is expanding into all sectors of the traditional economy.
The commerce that develops on the web - underlined the president of ASSONIME - creates stateless incomes and can therefore undermine the traditional corporate tax system of any State; these are developments that can lead to re-discussing the methods of determining business income, proposing its connection to factors that are more easily identifiable by the States that suffer the penetration of these companies.
