Extension yes, extension no. The Council of Ministers has postponed the postponement of the deadlines for the voluntary disclosure to next Tuesday. The hypothesis on which we reasoned envisages shifting the deadline for the presentation of the application for membership from 30 September to 30 November, while the last day to integrate the documentation should pass from 30 October to 31 December.
“Minister Padoan informed me that, due to a technical matter of Council work, the decree on the extension of voluntary disclosure could be postponed to Tuesday's CDM – announced the Undersecretary for the Economy, Enrico Zanetti, in a note -. Beyond this purely technical-procedural aspect, the political will to proceed remains firm".
The postponement was requested by accountants and other intermediaries involved in the procedures for the repatriation of capital, who asked for more time to dispose of the files.
In recent months, in fact, important delays have accumulated which have discouraged adhesions to the voluntary. The tax authorities' clarifications on some interpretative doubts, for example, arrived just last month, while it only came into force on 2 September the rule that cancels the doubling of the terms of assessment (thereby halving the cost of resurfacing illegally exported funds).
These innovations (especially the second one) meant that many taxpayers decided only at the last moment to adhere to the voluntary disclosure, with the result that even last week seven out of 10 applications were on the waiting list and the professionals - in view of the September 30 deadline – they were forced to turn down many assignments.
Preventing many taxpayers from initiating the procedure, however, would also have damaged the public coffers, since the State, by renouncing last-minute adhesions, would have lost the revenue that they would have produced (both the extraordinary one-off voluntary, and the ordinary one guaranteed each year by the taxation on re-emerged capital). And these are not secondary resources, given that they could be used to prevent the application of the safeguard clauses on the increase in excise duties and IRES and IRAP advances.
HOW VOLUNTARY DISCLOSURE WORKS
Voluntary disclosure is not a real amnesty: to make peace with the Revenue Agency, the tax evader must pay all unpaid taxes, but can enjoy discounts on penalties and interest and above all does not run the risk of incurring penalties provided for tax crimes committed or for the new crime of self-laundering.
– Who can activate the procedure
The voluntary is intended for natural persons, non-commercial entities, simple companies and tax-equivalent associations resident in Italy in at least one of the tax periods for which the procedure can be activated. Also included are "fictitious foreign residents", citizens "transferred" to black-listed countries, "foreign-appointed" subjects, trusts (including "foreign-appointed" trusts), taxpayers who hold assets abroad without being formally holders of them.
– Who is excluded
Access to the voluntary disclosure is not permitted to anyone who has had formal knowledge:
a) the start of accesses, inspections or checks;
b) the start of other administrative verification activities;
c) of his/her status as suspect or defendant in criminal proceedings for violation of tax laws.
The Tax Authority also clarifies that "the procedure cannot be activated even in the event that a third party, who is jointly and severally liable in tax matters with the applicant or who has participated in a tax crime attributed to him, becomes aware of the causes of inadmissibility ”. Furthermore, "in the presence of preliminary inspection activities involving only one year - continues the Agency -, it is possible to activate the procedure for the years not involved in the check".
– National voluntary disclosure
The national procedure “also applies to taxpayers who are not bound by the declaratory obligations regarding tax monitoring – writes the Revenue Agency – and those bound by this obligation who have fulfilled it correctly. All these subjects, therefore, will be able to regularize all the declaratory violations relating to income taxes and related surtaxes, substitute taxes, IRAP, VAT, as well as violations regarding the declarations of withholding agents. The national voluntary collaboration procedure can be started in relation to all tax periods for which, at the date of submission of the request, the terms for the assessment have not expired”.
– The accompanying report
By the end of the year, taxpayers must also send the tax authorities an accompanying report that includes various information:
– the amount of investments and assets of a financial nature set up or held abroad, even indirectly or through nominees;
– the determination of the income that was used to establish or purchase them, as well as the income that derives from their disposal or use for any reason;
– the determination of any higher taxable income for the purposes of income taxes and related surtaxes, substitute taxes, regional tax on production activities, social security contributions, value added tax and withholding taxes even if not connected with the activities established or held abroad.
The report, which the taxpayer can supplement in the adversarial phase, must be sent to the certified email address indicated in the communication with which the Agency confirmed receipt of the request. The entire procedure must be carried out electronically.
– Reduced fines for unwitting omissions
The tax authorities provide for a fine discount for so-called unconscious oversights. "The completion of the voluntary collaboration procedure does not preclude the further exercise of the ascertaining action - writes the Agency again - therefore, in the event that after completion, in relation to the years covered by the same procedure, the Office detects further higher taxable amounts not highlighted by the taxpayer at that time, will proceed" to a "partial assessment" and "will have to graduate the sanctioning response also according to the seriousness of the taxpayer's conduct and the latter's failure to comply with the collaborative spirit underlying the procedure of voluntary collaboration concluded". At the end of the procedure, "in the event of non-payment of even just one of the installments - concludes the tax authorities -, the voluntary disclosure is not completed and the Offices will send the taxpayer a new assessment notice and a new notice of dispute".
