Luca Venturini’s Blog

This year the Italian government asked for a mandatory document in which each company should produce a list of its customer and vendors.

In some ways, I’m a little optimist and I hope that something can change. Then this kind of artists of bureaucracy finds something new that surprises me. So today, the Italian government can find the data about the IVA tax in the following documents:

• periodical (quarterly and monthly) reports I send during the year,
• annual IVA tax report I must send by January 20,
• list of customers and vendors to be given by april 29,
• IVA report to be sent by the end of october.

The IVA tax balance is always the same, but some bureaucrat wants to see the same balance four times. Each time the report is different, so you have to study how to fill out four different reports during the year.

Next Sunday is the deadline for one of these reports. Sunday? Yes, correct. In Italy, everything is closed on Sunday, but this deadline is on Sunday.

Someone says that the report should be prepared and sent online. There should be software for this, but nobody knows where it is or how to download it. I’ve found an accountant forum where the accountants and bookkeepers are asking each other what to do about the problem.

Then I went to the Agenzia delle Entrate site. It is the Italian government agency for taxes. There is nothing about this deadline. No software, no words about the deadline, just nothing. I tried to search the site, but I found nothing. If you call you can wait on the line 4 or 5 hours.

Online, one can find a lot of myths about this report and this deadline. Someone says that you have to ask your customers and your vendors if you can disclose their names to the Italian government. Others are asking why should you ask them and what to do if they do not give you the agreement that you can divulge their name. Others say that your customers must say yes to this agreement to divulge their name to the goverment. But why should I ask for permission if they must agree to it? It is something like a big game with all the Italians playing it. Those laws are written by someone that never worked in the business.

Then I’ve found a document like this. It states that the privacy agency is working on the law that enforces the ability to divulge the list of customers and vendors in order to understand if there is a privacy violation. Privacy? By the government? What are they saying? On that document I found that the deadline is changed: October 15.

In Italy, people work up to July for the government and from July up to December for themself. But you have to add to this balance up to 15 days to understand what they want from you during the year. In the meantime, nobody can work in Italy. Is it a problem? Not for them. Welcome to Banana Republic.

Photo Credit: Argento_Vivo