Leo aims to expand the «cooperative compliance» – Corriere.it

Widening the audience of potential members, strengthening the roles of the OIC (Italian accounting body) and SOSE (Solutions for the economic system), providing for collaborative compliance also for natural persons, as well as for companies. These are the main issues, relating to the improvement of cooperative compliance in the tax area, listed by the Deputy Minister of Economy and Finance, Maurizio Leo, during the meeting «Collaborative compliance and other investment attraction tools» held in Milan. A system which, after its introduction in 2015, has led to important results in tax recovery and which still needs to be worked onfor example «by lowering the access threshold (now envisaged for subjects with revenues exceeding one billion euros, ed) to be able to admit more taxpayers, and also by strengthening the financial administration which is dedicated to this activity», said the deputy minister.

The pillars

The collaborative fulfillment improvement design is included in the fiscal delegation approved by the Council of Ministers and intends to make the fight against tax evasion preventive and no longer repressive. There are four fundamental steps identified by Deputy Minister Leo: «First of all, strengthen the OIC, which must identify the accounting principles and issue the interpretative decrees. We want to do the same consolidation with SOSE, through which we can determine a specific “tax control framework” for each sector, as certification of tax risk, detection, measurement, control and management”. The last two passages concern the world of companies and their relationship with the Revenue Agency: «On the basis of these principles – continued Leo – the company can draw up its own certification, which will be submitted to professionals, who will carry out an advisory and supervisory function. And if anomalies are detected, with this system it will be possible to resolve the issue directly with the taxpayer, in a preventive way».

Investments and competitiveness

Among the topics that hold the table there are also the revision of the sanctioning part, but above all the possible creation of a collaborative fulfillment for natural persons, in order to attract investments from abroad. «Italy is attractive because it has a favorable tax regime for natural persons. We must not see the new Scrooges as hostile, but as people who bring wealth and make our country grow – explained Leo -. And if we manage to set up cooperative compliance for them too, we will be able to contribute to this growth». Another delicate point, as far as the efficiency of the Revenue Agency is concerned, is that relating to personnel, on which both the government and the Agency itself seem to have found a common denominator. «In 2023 and 2024 we are finally planning competitions to hire a total of 11 thousand people – commented Ernesto Maria Ruffini, director of the Revenue Agency -. I also hope that the phase in which our professionals are welcomed, trained, made to grow and then let go because we are unable to keep them is over. We must inaugurate a phase in which the state manages to keep its best talents, in order to provide a service that is as efficient as possible”.