Double penalty for those who do not allow the use of the Pos and daily sending of data of transactions with electronic money to cancel the practice always in use of the “pre-account”. It is the double anti-evasion move, and not only, with which the financial administration relaunches the fight against blackmail on the front of receipts and receipts. With the publication in the Official Gazette of April 30 of the decree law n. 36, which introduces new measures for the relaunch of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, the Government aims to make fully operational the obligation to accept payments with debit and credit cards by subjects who sell products and the provision of services, including professional ones. And it does so by anticipating the application of the sanctions to be applied to merchants and professionals who deny the use of the Pos from 1 January 2023 to 30 June 2022.
The implementation of the Pnrr
But what do the sanctions on the Pos have to do with the National Recovery and Resilience Plan? The answer to this question lies in the fact that the reduction of cash and the promotion of alternative and digital payment instruments, for the first half of 2022, fall within the Milestone M1C1 -103 of the Pnrr developed by the Government to combat tax evasion. from omitted invoicing or non-issuance of fees as well as the so-called “evasion with consent”, more difficult to reveal as it provides for the tacit agreement between the person who sells the goods or the service and the customer who buys or uses it . The mission of the NRP expressly provides for the issuing of rules and regulatory measures to encourage compliance with tax obligations, or so-called tax compliance, as well as to improve audits and controls. The same mission, as stated in the explanatory report that the Government has attached to the new decree law no. 36 sent to the Chambers for conversion into law, provides for “the entry into force of the reform of the legislation in order to guarantee effective administrative sanctions in the event of refusal by private suppliers to accept electronic payments”. To make Milestone operational by the first half of 2022, as agreed in the Plan approved by Brussels, here is the advance to 30 June 2022 of the administrative penalties for those who refuse the use of the Pos and therefore electronic or digital payments.
Double penalty for those who refuse the Pos
Merchants, traders and professionals who will not accept payments with electronic money will therefore risk a fixed penalty of 30 euros to which another will be added to a variable extent and equal to 4% of the total value of the transaction. How it will be possible to make these sanctions really operational remains to be seen, because reporting and ascertaining non-electronic payments by merchants and professionals in the field will in any case remain difficult for the 007 tax authorities.
Stop the “pre-account” with the daily sending of Pos data
It is not so rare to receive the so-called “pre-account” from the operator or the restaurateur on duty, ie the balance without any fiscal value of the goods or services we have requested. A “pre-account” that if paid by the customer in cash ends up being totally unknown to the tax authorities. To put an end to the so-called “pre-account” practice, therefore, the new decree, with a simple regulatory change, introduces from 1 May 2022 the obligation to send all data relating to electronic or digital payments daily. And without any differentiation between final consumers and economic operators (business to business). All the data of the payments made will be transmitted by the intermediaries that issue cards and ATMs.
Privacy-proof use of data
The Tax Authority, it must be clarified immediately, does not want to know in any way the details of the transaction made by the customer and therefore have the data of those who buy, in full compliance with the privacy rules. With this obligation, the financial administration wants to have the data of those who sell goods or services that are not paid for with cash. The information received from the managers of electronic cards, ATMs or digital payment means will be used to carry out targeted risk analyzes thanks to the intersection with those received from merchants and professionals obliged to send electronic payments. In practice, in this way the Tax Authority aims to bring out the anomalies from the failure to transmit receipts with respect to the amounts collected with electronic money and which can be used to contrast the most difficult evasion to unhinge, as mentioned, the one with consent between the two. parts of operations. And not only. Other anomalies may also end up in the sights of the tax authorities and the Guardia di Finanza, which could bring out real money laundering operations, with significant sums held by merchants and professionals in the face of few stamped receipts or few receipts issued.