Rome, Covid bonus: tax credits for 110 million euros seized
The financial police, at the disposal of the Rome prosecutor, carried out an emergency preventive seizure of over 110 million euros of tax credits relating to support measures issued by the government during the most acute phase of the health emergency from Covid-19 , to help businesses and traders in difficulty (ALL UPDATES – MAPS AND GRAPHS OF INFECTIONS IN ITALY AND IN THE WORLD – VACCINE DATA IN ITALY. – THE SITUATION IN LAZIO).
the investigation
The activity originates from a risk analysis developed by the Revenue Agency on the accrual of the “bonuses” provided for by the “Relaunch” and “Cura Italia” decrees of 2020, connected to the rental costs of properties for non-residential use and recognized in the form of tax credits equal to a percentage of the royalties actually paid (up to 60%). “These tax benefits – explains a note from the financial police – can be directly used to offset debts, or sold, even in part and more times, for the same purpose, by giving notice, both by the assignor and the assignee, through the IT platform ‘credit transfer’ made available by the aforementioned Agency “.
The investigations
The investigations carried out by the financiers of the Economic-Financial Police Unit of Rome have instead brought to light “the alleged fictitiousness of the aforementioned tax credits, which were transferred through a website to a company based in the capital but operating throughout Italy, which proposes itself as a legal entity capable of providing customers with ‘liquidity through the disinvestment of tax credits deriving from special rules’, purchasing them and paying them immediately after having carried out, as stated, documentary checks on their authenticity, and then transfer them in turn to third parties, for a fee “. In the first ten months of 2021, according to the surveys, the company acquired tax credits for a nominal value of over 110 million from various subjects, many of which, according to initial findings, “would have no corporate structure or, in any case, not could benefit from tax breaks “. Among the inconsistencies detected by the financiers, the inclusion in the financial administration platform of the data of entrepreneurs for whom no lease contract has been registered and the having incurred rental costs for hundreds of thousands of euros per year. in the face of tax returns to import much more modest.