Assonime, the association that brings together joint-stock companies, flatly rejected the decree on the extraordinary contribution against high bills decided by the Government and devised in the form of a one-off levy on the extra profits of electricity, gas and oil products companies. It is not a rejection of the principle itself but of the ways in which the decree of 21 March, currently being examined by Parliament, classifies extra profits.
Assonime: the levy is "gravely arbitrary"
In a letter sent to the Finance and Industry commissions of the Senate, which are examining the decree concerning the matter in question, the general manager of Assonime, Stefano Micossi, demolishes the extraordinary levy defining it, as it is currently formulated, "seriously arbitrary, up to bordering on unconstitutionality".
Assonime: the timing of the profit comparison was wrong
Above all MIcossi considers the timing of the comparison of the dynamics of profits to be completely incongruous and writes: "The point is that they took the difference between the transactions subject to VAT, active and passive, in the recent period and in 2020 as the tax base and deal with the 'increase as extra profit', forgetting that 2020 was a period of pandemic lockdown and taking it as a starting point leads to “inflating the differences” ignoring the physiological rebound of transactions and mistakenly mistaking it for extra profit.
In particular, Assonime then points out that, due to the way the provision is formulated, there is a risk of also classify extraordinary operations as extra profits of companies such as the purchase or sale of shares that have nothing to do with profits.
For this Assonime asks the Parliament to better calibrate the discipline "to adapt it to the purposes that the levy intends to pursue, i.e. the application of a tax which actually has as its object the excess profits achieved by companies".
