Decisive steps to restore investment certainty

The Budget Law 2026 reintroduced a mechanism to increase the acquisition cost of capital goods 4.0 and RES plants for depreciation purposes. After a season focused on tax credits, often characterised by procedural complexities, the return to the hyper-amortisation is a positive sign; the three-year duration improves companies' planning, aligning with investment cycles.

Two months after entry into force, however, the potential of the rule remains unexpressed in the absence of the implementing decree. The point concerns the predictability of the framework within which companies make multi-year decisions. Regulatory uncertainty, as Einaudi taught, is an implicit cost. And even the administrative tradition - from Giannini onwards - has considered certainty of rules a structural condition of public action, not a formal detail. Legal certainty is not a luxury for jurists, nor an abstract principle: it is a factor of competitiveness.

Some of the profiles to be clarified:

The nature of the ceiling - The regulation divides the increase into three brackets: 180% up to 2.5 million; 100% between 2.5 and 10 million; 50% between 10 and 20 million but does not clarify whether the thresholds are annual or cumulative for the three-year period 2026-2028. The difference is substantial and the precedent of the 4.0 tax credit - interpreted by the Agenzia delle Entrate as annual - offers a relevant systematic reference. A cumulative interpretation would risk deferring the benefit: the company could determine the facilitation only in September 2028, with fruition in the following year's declarations.

The cloud node - Annex V includes cloud computing and IoT solutions among eligible assets, recognising the role of as-a-service models in digital innovation. The knot is an accounting and tax one: the hyper-amortisation operates on capitalised and depreciable costs, while cloud fees are operating costs, not depreciable. Without explicit clarification, there is a risk of excluding increasingly widespread digital investments. A regulatory intervention that - as in 2017 - allows relief on periodic royalties would eliminate the discrepancy between technological developments and tax regulations.