Marketplace sales, Amazon pays VAT bill for '19-'21: 511 million

Agreement reached between Amazon and the Italian tax authorities. The Seattle-based group has agreed to pay €511 million to settle the tax agency's disputes over sales finalised through the American platform in the period 2019-2021.

The settlement between the multinational and the Agency, signed on the last day, actually also marks the divorce between these two actors, on the one hand, and the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office and the Guardia di Finanza on the other.

The Gdf investigation, in fact, had led the Milanese magistrates to charge Amazon with the crime of fraudulent misrepresentation for not having declared VAT on the 'distance sales' of millions of products largely coming from China and delivered to Italian consumers. For the Public Prosecutor's Office, in essence, the platform would not have done what the regulation at the time (Article 13 of Decree Law 34/2019 'Crescita', which remained in force until 2021) required it to do, namely to notify the Agency of a series of data from its suppliers on pain of becoming a 'tax debtor' in their place. Precisely from these failures, the Public Prosecutor's Office charged (and will probably continue to charge) Amazon with a bill that, between undeclared tax, penalties and interest, exceeds three billion euros.

On this point, however, the Tax Agency distanced itself, initiating an interlocution with the marketplace aimed at identifying the exact moment when an order placed on Amazon - between 2019 and 2021 - would not automatically become a 'distance sale', thus triggering the mandatory fulfilments of Article 13 (identikit of the seller, under penalty - for Amazon - of taking over its VAT obligations). The balance was found in the following terms: if the good 'intermediated' by Amazon had been in the Italian warehouses for at least seven days, the Italian consumer's purchase in Italy did not constitute a distance sale. The negotiations between the multinational company - assisted by tax lawyers Guglielmo Maisto and Marco Cerrato and criminal lawyers Guido Alleva, Marco Calleri and Luca Luparia - and the Inland Revenue, once this distinction had been agreed, focused on the millions of sales that had taken place in that timeframe and the relative stocks using a complicated algorithm to arrive at the alleged tax debt.

Conclusions of the tax agreement on which, moreover, Amazon maintains a different point of view. "This agreement reflects our commitment to collaborate constructively with the Italian authorities," is the multinational company's statement. "We will vigorously defend ourselves against any criminal proceedings, which we believe to be unfounded. We are among the top 50 taxpayers in Italy and one of the largest foreign investors in the country. In the last 15 years we have invested more than 25 billion euros in Italy, where we directly employ more than 19,000 people. Unpredictable regulatory frameworks, disproportionate penalties and protracted legal proceedings affect Italy's attractiveness as an investment destination