Green light from the Government to the decree law which contains the measures to encourage the disclosure of capital illicitly held abroad by Italian citizens. The provision was approved by the Council of Ministers at its meeting on 24 January.
The decree law, underlined the Prime Minister, Gianni Letta, and the Minister of Economy and Finance, Fabrizio Saccomanni, does not avoid the payment of evaded taxes, but only reduces some sanctions and penalties, in order to encourage regularization. In the Executive's strategy, the provision is linked to the agreements that the Italian State is reaching with Switzerland in particular, but also with other countries considered former tax havens, which will allow greater exchanges of information on the capital held abroad by Italian citizens. All this within the framework of the international evolution of the tax systems of Western countries, increasingly less inclined to allow the existence of territories with excessively privileged taxation and non-transparent as regards information on the deposits kept there.
In addition to not granting discounts on taxes evaded, the new decree law does not provide for any form of anonymity for those who choose to regularize capital abroad, as was the case for the previous "tax shield".
The measures envisaged to solicit the emergence of capital abroad, in substance, do not base the probabilities of success so much on the advantages granted in terms of tax savings, but on the elimination of the penal sanctions connected to the failure to declare and, above all, on the new international framework that has arisen in recent times, which constitutes a much more concrete threat than previously for those who have hidden capital outside Italian territory.
In the text presented to the Council of Ministers - which may undergo some corrections before publication in the Official Gazette - regularization is permitted for natural persons, simple and equivalent companies and non-commercial entities, including trusts residing in Italy (therefore not to joint-stock companies and commercial entities), and may concern violations of the reporting obligations relating to the Unicode RW form carried out by 31 December 2013. Therefore, it does not concern capital set up abroad in 2013, for which the declaration RW must be submitted by September 2014.
Following the self-declaration of the violations, the crimes of unfaithfulness or omitted declaration are not punishable, except in cases of tax fraud, in which the penal sanctions remain, but reduced by half.
The declaration of the irregularities committed triggers the obligation to pay the taxes due and evaded, on the basis of an assessment by the Revenue Agency, but entails discounts on the administrative sanctions, which as regards the evaded taxes are reduced to one sixth (a third if the assessment is defined with agreement); while as regards the failure to declare in the RW form they go down to one third.
Compared to these measures, the self-declaration further reduces the sanctions by a quarter, which becomes half if the funds have been held illegally in a State of the European Union or included in the White list or even if they are transferred to one of these States, or directly in Italy, after the regularization declaration. The same reduction of the sanctions by half, however, is still due even if the person who committed the violation asks the foreign financial intermediary with whom the capital is placed to send the Italian authorities the information on the regularized capital.
The regularization procedure is precluded for anyone who is aware of accesses, inspections or checks already initiated by the Italian authorities or of the start of any assessment activity or criminal proceedings.
To access the regularization, the provision launched by the Government allows time until 30 September 2015.
