On Thursday evening, the Council of Ministers decided in extremis to postpone from 18 to 31 January the date on which the Agenzia delle Entrate – Collection will start sending tax bills again and other deeds to Italian tax payers. In all, the tax authorities have accumulated in recent months 50 million records which have not been shipped due to the pandemic. Disposing of them will not be easy, because the health crisis is still serious and the risk of creating gatherings at the post office is high. Not to mention that, with the regime of restrictions that has just been tightened, the notification of sanctions or of assessment or notification deeds by the tax authorities risks stoke social anger which already seems to be at the guard level. Entrepreneurs and VAT numbers, then, would run the risk of having to use the money received (or arriving) with the refreshments to pay taxes. A joke, as well as a paradox.
For all these reasons, the Government has decided to take an extra two weeks to study what to do. For sure, in fact, on the 31st the notifications will not restart as if we were in normal conditions. We are thinking about a bridging solution which – net of the evolution of the government crisis – can defuse the impact of the payments on taxpayers and businesses for the time being. So we talk about a new suspension of the folders for at least another two or three months, until March 31st or until April 30th, the new expiration of the state of health crisis.
After that, it would still help a plan to ensure the safe restart of notifications. One possible solution is tolengthen prescription times to spread over a longer period not only the payments, but also the notifications of the 2021 folders, which will add up to those of 2020 that have not yet been delivered. Then there is the hypothesis of a new scrap which allows the new bills to be paid with a discount on penalties and interest. Finally, it cannot be excluded the cancellation of loads no longer payable.
