Esterometro and pos commissions, when the reporting obligation is activated. Italy’s Revenue Agency has recently clarified through a specific ruling, Risoluzione n.91, the processing of invoices received from a supplier across the border in relation to commissions on services for electronic transactions. In such cases, the use of esterometro is required.
Indeed, unlike the spesometro, the esterometro does not concern the operations relevant for VAT purposes, but purchases of goods and/or services from non-established taxable persons and Business to Business (BtB) or Business to Consumer (BtC) supplies to non-established/resident customers for which an invoice is issued. The Revenue Agency clarified this point answering a question relating to the Pos commissions charged by a British company. Yet, if the Italian client chooses to fulfill the invoicing obligations relating to the reverse charge through the Data Interchange System (SDI) and therefore electronically, he is not required to fulfill the esterometro since the Financial Administration is fully aware of the operation.
What is the esterometro and who is required to file it – The “esterometro,” has been introduced for the purposes of acquiring information related to the transactions that do not fall within the mandatory e-invoicing obligation through the Data Interchange System (Sistema di Interscambio or SDI) starting from 1 January 2019. According to the Legislative Decree no.127/2015, taxable persons established in Italy shall electronically submit to the Italian Tax Authorities the data relating to the transactions with counterparties not established in Italy with the exception of operations for which a customs bill has been issued and/or operations for which an e-invoice has been voluntarily issued. The electronic transmission must be made quarterly by the end of the month following the reference quarter.
The case at issue – Particularly, where the company is not established in the territory of the State and provides a service through which electronic transactions can be carried out, despite the fact that this service is invoiced at zero rate as a "service fee", and the commissions on the transactions and any chargebacks have been deducted automatically from the payments, yet there is a substantial assimilation of this tax to the fees paid for payment services. For this reason, a full range of transactions are exempt from Vat, including negotiation, relating to deposits of funds, current accounts, payments, credit transfers and so on, with the exception of debt collection. However, for VAT purposes, this service is territorially relevant in Italy as it is rendered to a customer, a VAT taxable person, established in the territory of the Italian State. Therefore, the taxpayer must fulfill the VAT invoicing and registration obligations with the reverse charge mechanism, which in this case, being the provider established in another EU State, occurs by integrating the invoice received with the VAT exemption regime , which will be followed by the registration of the document in the purchase and sales registers and the related payment obligations. Obviously if the "Italian" client chooses to fulfill the invoicing obligations relating to the reverse charge by means of the Data Interchange System, or SDI, he is not required to fulfill the esterometro as the Financial Administration is aware of the transaction in question.
Stefano Latini