VAT numbers, maxi-discount with flat tax on arrangement with creditors: new tax rules

With a decree - included in the agenda of the Council of Ministers on Friday, 26 July - the government is preparing the maxi-discount for VAT parcels that will adhere to the concordato preventivo. Instead of the more onerous Irpef taxation with increasing rates according to income, the solution that the deputy minister for the economy, Maurizio Leo, and his technicians have decided to adopt is to introduce a flat tax on the differential between the accepted proposal of pre-emptive agreement formulated by the financial administration and the declared income for 2023. A flat tax with increasing rates of 10%, 12% and 15% according to the grade in the tax report cards (more than eight, between six and eight, less than six).

Officially, as anticipated in the pages of the newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore of 10 July 2024, it was Parliament, with the opinions expressed by the Finance Committees of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, that asked the Government to intervene with the conditions expressed in the opinions on the corrective decree on the arrangement with creditors. Thus, the requests arrived at by both the National Council of Chartered Accountants and by Cna and Confartigianato to make the acceptance of the arrangement proposal more attractive and less burdensome, resulting in a higher income to be complied with for 2024 (although in this case with a reduction of the required taxable income by half) and for 2025, have been acknowledged.

The flat tax with increasing rates, which in any case rewards those who are more fiscally reliable, as mentioned above, is nevertheless an attempt to make inroads among the trade associations of artisans and the self-employed and among accountants, who assist the VAT holders concerned, in order to push adherence to the concordat. Not least because the instrument, according to the first proposed calculations (see 'Il Sole 24 Ore' of 18 June 2024), runs the risk of asking a bill up to eight times higher from taxpayers who have demonstrated a lower fiscal reliability by achieving grades well below the threshold of eight on the report card. Nor does the possibility of gradually reaching the 10 on the report card required by the software seem to have dispelled the mistrust towards the agreement so far, with an intermediate step that for the first year envisages a 50% reduction in income (and therefore in taxes due) as envisaged in the agreement.

Time is tight, however, because the entire concordat game will be played after the summer break, and therefore a complete set of rules must be defined. The decisive step will be the acceptance of the proposal by 31 October and then the payment of the advance by 30 November. From these two steps, the government will know how much and what additional resources (not estimated for now) will be needed in view of the measures to be adopted with the manoeuvre site already open.