Premium for investment in capital goods

The Italian Revenue Agency, with the latest answers to interpellations no. 600, 602 and 603 recently published, has analyzed some issues related to the application of the tax credit for investments in capital goods as Law 178/2020.

In particular, with the answer number 600/2021, the Revenue Agency confirmed the eligibility of S.T.P. to the tax credit for investments in assets 4.0. These entities are among the beneficiaries of both ordinary credit and credit 4.0, as holders of business income. In fact, for the purposes of quantifying the income produced by the S.T.P. the fact of operating in a legal corporate form is relevant and not the actual exercise of a professional activity.

With reference to the temporal coordination of the facilitation disciplines set forth in Law 160/2019 and Law 178/2020, answers number 602/2021 and 603/2021 confirm that:

In particular, the answer number 602/2021 analyses the starting point for the use of the tax credit in the case of an investment, made after 15 November 2020, in a 4.0 asset which is interconnected on 31 December 2020 and whose expert's report by a qualified technician, which is not compulsory for the purposes of the relief as it is an asset costing less than Euro 300,000, was sworn and delivered to the company in January 2021. 

In this case, pursuant to Article 1, paragraph 1059 of Law 178/2020, the Revenue agency believes that the first of the three portions of the tax credit can be used for compensation starting from the year 2020, i.e. the year in which the asset is interconnected. However, the Revenue Agency reiterates that if the annual portion is not used in whole or in part, the residual amount may be carried forward in the declarations of subsequent tax periods without any time limit going to add to the portion usable in the year.

As regards the documentary obligations required in order to benefit from the relief in question, the answer to appeal number 603/2021 confirms the possibility for taxpayers to regularize documents already issued, relating to eligible investments, which do not correctly indicate the relevant relief provisions. In any case, it should be considered that such regularization must be carried out before the start of any inspection activities by the tax authorities.