Lighter penalties for failing to report foreign assets correctly.

Well, after my last blog post about the fiscal monitoring which is to now take place to a much greater degree regarding assets and money held in Italy and abroad there is some good news for a change.


As of 31st July 2103 the penalties that will be imposed for failing to report 'assets held abroad' will be much lighter than before.  This has been driven by EU legislation describing the previous system of fines and penalties for failure to report assets held abroad, as 'unfair and unjust'.


The fines for failing to report on the RW form, have been lowered as follows:

FROM
10 -50% of the undeclared value and the right to confiscate the assets, or the equivalent value of the assets held in Italian domestic assets

TO
3 - 15% of the assets undeclared and no ability to confiscate property to the equivalent value. 

In addition: 
If you fail to report information, but then subsequently present the outstanding information within 90 days of the reporting deadline, a fine of only 258 EUR will be charged. 

For Blacklist countries (including Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey, Bermuda, etc)
The penalties double from 6 - 30%

The good news is that these sanctions will also apply to previous years where failure to report has been discovered but not proven. 

So, whilst penalties are difficult for anyone to bear, at least they are considerably less then previous years for the same offences. 

In line with the new fiscal monitoring regulations, as described on my previous blog post, any financial companies who do not report movements of capital over 15000 EUR will be subject to 10 - 25% of the undeclared amount.  In this way the pressure to report capital movements is applied from all sides.

What should be interesting will be how this all develops in the coming months and years!