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12. September 2023
Fonte: gioconews.it

Online game: "Enhancing the tidying tool"

This is the hope of Lawyer Stefano Sbordoni, as an expert in the sector in view of the next budget law for 2024, to put an end once and for all to various disputes.

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4. August 2023
Fonte: agimeg.it

"Savesport tax:" the Lazio Regional Administrative Court confirms the decision of the Customs and Monopolies Agency

The Administrative Court of Lazio, with the Sentece of last June 28, has rejected all the appeals presented by the betting operators for the cancellation of the payment notices of the 'Salva-sport' tax, which the Customs and Monopolies Agency, at the beginning of 2023, had requested from the operators arrears as a 0.5 percent levy on the collection of bets provided for by the 2020 Relaunch decree and in force until December 31, 2021 to feed the so-called "Fondo Salvasport", as this tax was not considered anti-constitutional. The administrative judges, as stated in the sentence, first of all recall that, with regard to the taxation of bets, "the criterion of taxation on collection is, traditionally, the ordinary criterion for taxing tax revenue from wagers, pursuant to the 2 of Legislative Decree no. 504/98, according to which the taxable amount for bets is made up of the amount wagered for each bet". According to the TAR, however, "Article 1, paragraph 945 of Law no. 208/15 has progressively introduced, since 2016 for fixed-odds bets, the different criterion of taxation on the margin; this is a choice that reflects the tax policy choices of the legislator, whose general discretion affects not only the right to institute new taxes, but also to bring them into line, establishing the related tax base". "The reasons justifying the collectability of the levy even for amounts exceeding the Fund's financing ceilings", continues the sentence, "are inferable not only from the literal content but also from the context and ratio legis of article 217, taking into account the wide discretion enjoyed by the legislator in the tax field, in establishing taxes for purposes of general interest within the general canon of reasonableness and constitutional principles. In the circumstance, the tax has a fully determined legal basis (rate, taxable persons , tax base) and the collection of bets peacefully constitutes an explanatory phenomenon of ability to pay. Moreover, no violation of the principle of proportionality has been identified, given that the amount of the levy, which however falls on a very large number of taxpayers and is punctually limited in the percentage of 0.5 on collection, as well as limited by the temporary nature of the measure, it is consistent with the aim of ensuring support for the sports sector, particularly penalized by the onset of the pandemic and the consequent prudential closures ordered by the legislator and the regulator, in a perspective that allows the disbursement or use of public resources even regardless of recourse to the Salvasport Fund". Furthermore, according to the TAR, "the intervention ultimately carried out by the Customs and Monopolies Agency does not violate the principle of non-retroactivity of the tax, since it does not involve the subjection to the levy of further or different manifestations of ability to pay" and also the "supposed violation of the principles relating to the freedoms guaranteed by articles 49 and 56 of the TFUE (establishment and free exercise of services and economic activities), the Court of Justice confirmed that gambling is one of the non-harmonised matters, and that the legislator retains the broadest discretion in the specification". In conclusion, for the administrative judges, "the 0.5% levy pursuant to Article 217 of Legislative Decree No. 34/2020 constitutes an extraordinary and temporary tax, different from the single tax levied on operators pursuant to Legislative Decree No. 23 of December 1998 504, therefore the choice of the legislator who referred, for the taxable base, to the criterion of taxation on collection (cf., Constitutional Court, 26.10.2007, n.350) does not appear per se censurable".

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