Italy Unilaterally Implements the European Commission’s Digital Service Tax Proposal

Di Gabriele Colombaioni -
1.              Introduction The Italian Budget Law for 2019 (Law No. 145 of 30 December 2018) introduced a new tax on digital services that have been labelled as “Web Tax”. Such new tax seems essentially a unilateral implementation of the Digital Service Tax (“DST”) proposed by the European Commission in March last year as the Italian legislator replicated several of the provisions of the Commission proposal (“DSTP”)[1]. It should be noted that the discipline of the Web Tax is not complete as the Budget Law provides that an implementing decree (“the Decree”) should be issued by the Ministry for Economic Development. The Decree should be issued within April 2019.. . .