On the occasion of our periodical “Training Afternoon” dedicated to professional updating for the entire team of the Firm, we discussed, among other things, the case of the application to a holding company holding direct and indirect shareholdings in foreign companies of the legislation on “Shell Companies” (ART. 30, paragraph 1, Law 724 of 23/12/1994).
Introduced in 1994, the regulation on shell companies (or “non-operational”) has an anti-avoidance intent and affects companies “without business”, i.e. those which, beyond the declared corporate purpose, are established for the sole purpose of administering the personal assets of the shareholders (shareholdings and other financial assets, registered real estate and movable property, receivables, etc.), “rather than to carry out an effective commercial activity”. A minimum tax income is presumptively attributed to these subjects.
The regulation of non-operating companies also applies to holding companies that hold shareholdings in companies resident abroad and without a permanent establishment in Italy. It should be noted that the exclusion deriving from the passing of the operational test for the foreign company could be doubtful, due to the fact that the latter prepares the financial statements on the basis of different accounting principles and, therefore, the result of the test could not be considered reliable by the Italian tax authorities.
The remaining part of our in-depth analysis – in the form of an excerpt – is available in the slides available here.