GIULIANOVA. It is a provision that represents a new orientation and which certainly opens up different scenarios in terms of taxes for a vast audience of economic operators. The First Instance Tax Court of Justice of Teramo accepted the appeal of the manager of a Giulianova fuel plant against the Revenue Agency regarding the VAT payment for betting shops, lottery and tobacconist activities.
In the context of the fuel sales activity, which remains the primary one, the trader manages a lottery, football pools and tobacconist business in the same space. According to the Revenue Agency it is not an ancillary activity and for this reason the VAT deduction cannot be applied. The trader has a different opinion and, underlining the main activity linked to fuels, has appealed against an assessment which provides for the payment of 14 thousand euros for the year 2016. The Court of Justice upheld the appeal and annulled the act challenged by establishing that the activity linked to lottery and tobacco is an ancillary activity. «In the case that concerns the characteristic activity of the company, that is to say the one in which the company precisely identifies itself towards the audience of third parties», we read in the ruling of the college (president Elena Tomassinispeaker Luigi Di Marco, judge Nicola Valletta, «it can only be the one attributable to the distribution of fuel. The residual activities, although directly connected to the exercise of the commercial activity in the broad sense, are placed in a subordinate position with respect to the activity for which the economic operator identifies himself and is recognized on the market. These activities, in concrete terms, far from being attributable to a truly habitual characteristic activity, appear instead to be connected with their own or “characteristic” activity only indirectly and therefore to the service or instrumental with respect to them”. And to better highlight this ruling the judges add: «From the point of view of the aforementioned suitability of each of the activities to be managed in full autonomy, then, the circumstance acquires importance that when the distribution system is closed to the public the bar also remains closed and consequently also the activities of tobacco resale, resale of editorial products, provision of services relating to the management of lotteries and lotteries. In conclusion, the board believes that the activity in question should be considered as an instrumental and ancillary activity, since, even if carried out in a non-occasional manner and beyond the statutory provisions, in practice it is extraneous to the taxpayer’s business activity” . The trader was assisted by his lawyer in presenting the appeal Pietro Palozzo and the accountant Alessandra Di Santo.
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