Fuel fraud: more traceability

Traceability and transparency. This is the combination that the Finance Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, chaired by Marco Osnato (Fdi), indicates for the elimination of the areas where evasion of VAT and excise duties on fuels creeps in. A phenomenon on which the concluding document of the fact-finding investigation conducted in recent weeks, listening to all the main stakeholders and institutional stakeholders, indicates that there is still some way to go to combat the pitfalls of fraud. "The element of transparency needs to be strengthened," the MEPs explain, both with reference to the identification and selection of economic operators in the supply chain and to the protection of end consumers.
Profiles that will be back on the agenda, both in the completion of the tax delegation and the next economic measures that the government and parliament will be working on. In terms of the supply chain, the indication shared by the Finance Commission is to implement mechanisms and systems capable of identifying with certainty the counterparty of the economic transaction. How? For example, with the development of the strengthened authorisation for distributor owners or with the introduction of a document of contractual regularity, to be issued following a precise verification of the actual possession of certain fundamental requirements - of a technical, organisational, financial and economic nature - by the party requesting authorisation to distribute fuels and any other energy product intended for motor vehicles. But from an anti-fraud perspective, there is also a need to increase the monitoring of activities that pass through third-party tax warehouses. While on the side of end-consumer protection, the Finance Committee calls for 'ensuring greater publicity of the components of the product's selling price'.

Added to this, however, is a further strand under investigation: tracking. "Telematisation is an important element," said Finance Committee Chairman Osnato, highlighting the suggestions contained in the concluding document. In this sense goes the indication of the obligation to install tracking and measuring instruments on the pipeline (quantitative, qualitative and thermal) for every type of fuel depot, operating both on entry and exit, also ensuring the telematic connection of these instruments with the control authorities. Furthermore, 'the completion of the tracking system should then be achieved through the extension to all warehouses - including small ones - of the Infoil system, which currently allows data on the entry and exit of products to be communicated to the customs authority' from warehouses of more than 3,000 cubic metres.
The survey also revealed the need to harmonise Italian taxation with that of the European Union: 'Harmonisation of both excise duties and VAT would in fact lead to a reduction in the tax burden on the final price, with positive effects also in terms of combating illegalities'.

In all this, however, the activity of the financial administration to combat criminal phenomena remains in the foreground. Here, underlines the document of the Finance Commission, 'it seems appropriate not only to promote the consolidation of the practice of the ministerial technical tables, but also to strengthen the controls of the Guardia di Finanza, both on the national territory and at EU level'. And 'the international interactions of the Guardia di Finanza are also fundamental, considering that, due to the places of origin and extraction of mineral oils, excise and VAT frauds also take place to a significant extent in the cross-border sphere outside the Union'. Whereas, from an operative point of view, 'the constitution of a pool of inter-force and inter-disciplinary coordination could be evaluated, dedicated, as a priority, to the specific fight against illegality and VAT and excise fraud in the sector of the trade of fuels and energy products, also through the constitution of a functional inter-force connection and also attributing the subject of frauds in the petroleum products sector to the competence of the Anti-mafia District Directorates, under the coordination, at a central level, of the National Anti-mafia Prosecutor's Office'.