IRS autumn campaign with alerts and flat tax controls

Not only alerts to push adhesions to the arrangement with creditors. The Inland Revenue is launching its autumn campaign to achieve its objectives by the end of the year, quantified in an overall recovery from the fight against evasion of EUR 11.1 billion. In the crosshairs are taxpayers who have not submitted their declarations or have submitted them with anomalies, VAT numbers who have taken advantage of the flat-rate regime despite not having the right to do so, and the stimulus to return without penalties and interest research and development credits relating to the 2015-2019 period that were unduly used as compensation. In addition, of course, to the most dangerous fraud phenomena, starting with those in the field of VAT, where the level of attention is highest on the phenomenon of open-and-close VAT accounts after the tightening introduced by the last two Budget Laws.

The objectives are to fully implement the tax policy guidelines issued by the Ministry of the Economy, which has set the course to focus heavily on the compliance strategy. The target by the end of the year (and thus for the next two) is to reach the total of three million letters sent to taxpayers to stimulate the so-called 'ravvedimento operoso', i.e. in essence self-corrections. A strategy from which payments totalling EUR 3.1 billion are expected. The autumn is the hot phase of the year for sending in returns (30 September for the 730 and 31 October for the Redditi model). This is why, once the two deadlines have passed, the IRS will trigger cross-checks, reminding those who had more than one income from employment or assimilated income and for which the tax withholding agent did not make a reconciliation, or perhaps because there was rental income from property that was not declared.

But the compliance strategy also concerns the world of VAT returns. Attention is now focused on those who did not submit the form for the last tax year, while cross-referencing operations will continue between the data on electronic invoices and telematic receipts in the tax authorities' databases and those indicated in VAT returns for previous years. The process, however, also concerns a refinement of the strategies deployed, with an improvement in the quality of the information base and in the controls to monitor any distortions that have emerged in the recent past. Along this road, in fact, the re-proposal of cross-references between Pos data and those of telematic receipts may prove valuable in trying to identify the pre-count 'furbies' who then fail to record sales transactions.

Among small VAT numbers, the tax authorities are closely monitoring the situation of taxpayers under the flat-rate scheme. This is because the attractiveness of the regime has become more and more substantial, reaching close to 2 million adhesions due to both the tax advantages of the flat tax and the related simplifications (even though the generalised electronic invoicing obligation was triggered on 1 January). However, the issue of feedback on the existence of both the access and permanence requirements remains, just as the political debate revolves around the possibility of raising the income or remuneration limit for the future from the current €85,000 to €100,000. This also leads to the need to carry out cross-checks on the data indicated in the tax returns by flat-tax VAT holders. Cross-checks that will also have a bearing on taxpayers' choices in view of the 31 October deadline to join the arrangement with creditors.

Another hot topic of the autumn will undoubtedly be that of the spontaneous repayment of research and development tax credits from 2015 to 2019. After the certification guidelines arrived at the beginning of July, the game seems to have reached a crucial step in view of the deadline (repeatedly extended and currently set for 31 October) to submit the application for amnesty without penalties and interest. The push for compliance in this case may take the form of accompanying the application with a view to avoiding future disputes with the tax authorities and, of course, the subsequent payment in a single instalment by 16 December 2024 or in three instalments (16 December 2024, 2025 and 2026).