Corporate Tax Governance

Despite appearances, the tax regulation framework has changed dramatically in the past four years. At the international level, the BEPS initiative has been launched, while the European Union has issued, and the Member States have implemented, several directives on administrative cooperation.

These directives require an exchange of data and information on almost all international relationships. FATCA and the CRS (Common Reporting Standard) have also been implemented. In order of time, DAC6 is also being implemented in Italy (European Delegation Law 2018, approved in October 2019). It includes disclosure obligations for tax planning operations deemed aggressive, amongst other things. In Italy, the entry into force in 2019 of the insolvency and business crisis code, with the related extension of audit obligations and the establishment of robust organisational and accounting structures, as well as the inclusion of tax offences in Legislative Decree 231/01, have happened in the recent past. As a result, companies have also been reflecting on the effectiveness of their tax management and tax risk control systems, a variable that should no longer be neglected and that now goes beyond traditionally more bureaucratic aspects.

The cooperative compliance regime, for those entitled to access it, or the establishment of suitable tax risk oversight, has become a significant aspect of corporate governance: tax governance has become an important part of the broader corporate governance picture.

LED can assist companies on this necessarily evolving path of internal control systems aimed at preventing or reducing tax risk, a path which, in addition to requiring a high level of professionalism in tax matters, also presupposes knowledge of the most important corporate governance rules and internal control systems.