The digitisation of the customs declaration and the modalities for VAT deduction

In its Circular 22 of 06 June 2022, the Customs and Monopolies Agency illustrated the effects of this innovation for the purposes of deducting VAT paid on importation by providing that the document to be recorded in the register referred to in Article 25 of Presidential Decree 633/72 was the new “summary statement for accounting purposes” of the customs declaration, in which the total VAT paid on importation is summarised, broken down by rate.

This approach was also recently confirmed in the answer to Interpello No. 417 of 05 August 2022, in which the Tax Authorities also clarified that the deduction is not allowed on the basis of a “courtesy document” issued by forwarding agents, “considering that the content is left to the discretion of the individual issuers and it is not possible to verify whether it possesses the same guarantees of reliability as the document issued by the Customs Agency”.

The process of introducing the new system, however, is not yet complete: following Circular No. 22, the Customs and Monopolies Agency had announced that the summary statement for accounting purposes would not be available until 22 June, a deadline then postponed to 21 July. Subsequently, in a notice dated 20 July, the Customs and Monopolies Agency announced that, due to technical difficulties, it would still be possible to use the “IM message” until a date to be determined, and therefore that, in such cases, the customs bill could be entered in the VAT registers for VAT deduction purposes.