Tremonti Romagnoli Piccardi e Associati, with a team composed of Giuseppe Pizzonia, Giovanni d’Ayala Valva e Laura Trimarchi, successfully assisted a company – part of an international group operating in the energy sector – which manages a regasifier located in Italy, in a tax dispute concerning the deduction of certain costs incurred in relation to the Italian tax consolidating company, and the deduction of the related VAT, due to the lack of certainty and inherence requirements.

The Provincial Court of Agrigento upheld the defense’s arguments and annulled the notices of assessment, pointing out that, in the case of a tax consolidation, the non-deductibility of a cost, due to an alleged lack of evidence and inherence requirement, has no effect on the determination of the net taxable income of the parent company, given that such income would have been of the same total amount even if such transactions had not been carried out or had been carried out for a different amount. According to the Court, in fact, in the context of intercompany transactions, and in the absence of tax arbitrage, if a deducted cost is offset by a revenue fully taxed with respect to another subject part of the same group, the reasonability of a challenge concerning the lack of the inherent requirement loses any consistency. With respect to the VAT challenge, the Court of first instance affirmed that, due to the neutrality of VAT, the inherent nature of a cost cannot be excluded based solely on an evaluation of the appropriateness of the expense, unless the tax authorities demonstrate that it is manifestly uneconomic.