The draft legislative decree on the ascertainment procedure, implementing the tax delegation law, revises and simplifies the relevant regulations and introduces, for smaller entities (IRES and IRPEF entities), the possibility of accessing a two-year arrangement with creditors.

The changes regarding assessment with adhesion and judicial conciliation are positive, as are the interventions that open the way for conditional adhesion to the minutes of findings by removing 'manifest errors' (on the definition of which the legislator needs to intervene). On the other hand, the interventions on the procedure for the recovery of unduly compensated tax credits, in cases of non-entitlement or non-existence, are to be fine-tuned, since the regulatory changes do not sufficiently highlight the differences between the two cases, as required by the delegation criteria and reiterated by the most recent case law of legitimacy.

A welcome novelty is given by the new forms of administrative cooperation between States that make the Italian legal system more adherent to the most recent amendments to Directive 2011/16/EU (so-called "Directive on Administrative Cooperation - DAC 1').

Stricter rules are also introduced for persons not resident in the territory of the State who carry out transactions in Italy through a tax representative, in order to avoid abuses in the use of this identification and reduce VAT fraud related to intra-Community transactions.

Some critical aspects of the new two-year arrangement with creditors are noted with regard to the additional formalities required to enter into it (with reference to taxpayers subject to ISAs), the reduced time dedicated to the discussion with the Revenue Agency to verify the correctness of the data indicated in the proposal, as well as the correct identification of exceptional causes for the termination of the arrangement with creditors.