THE CRYPTO AMNESTY: A WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY

The Law No. 197/2022 has provided a specific procedure for regularizing past violations related to crypto-assets. This is a kind of “voluntary disclosure” in favor of the taxpayer who spontaneously decides to regularize past violations on holding and/or the proceeds from holding virtual currencies.

The uniqueness of this provision is given by the self-declaration by the taxpayer, who voluntarily chooses to cooperate with the Financial Administration by indicating the possession of foreign financial investments and activities and regularizing their position, in order to make these funds usable without incurring more severe penalties. In particular, in this case, it is the possibility of easily regularizing both income and tax monitoring violations by resident persons.

The operational implementation document of the procedure by the Italian Tax Authorities is still pending publication. Here, we propose the information currently available and will update with new clarifications over time.

The regularization procedure involves an expenditure on the part of the requesting taxpayer, according to what is provided by Article 1, paragraphs 139 and 140 of Law No. 197/2022. In particular, the costs to be incurred can be outlined as follows:

• Violations regarding tax monitoring in the RW framework: a penalty of 0.5% per year on the value of undeclared assets.

• Income violations: 3.5% yearly substitute tax on income + a 0.5% yearly penalty for tax monitoring.

It must be noted that the procedure appears to be applicable indiscriminately both by entities that have filed incorrect declarations and those that have completely omitted the presentation of virtual currencies in income declarations. Official clarifications on this point are awaited with the publication of the document by the Italian Tax Authorities.