ROME (Reuters) – Italian ruling-coalition lawmakers are urging the government to scale back plans to increase taxes on cryptocurrency capital gains and expand the number of firms forced to pay a digital tax, a parliamentary document showed on Tuesday.
Both proposals are part of more than 300 “priority amendments” that the ruling parties have submitted to change Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s budget for next year, testing her ability to keep lawmaker requests at bay.
Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti intends to hike taxation on capital gains from cryptocurrency such as bitcoin to 42% from 26%.
But his party colleague Giulio Centemero, backed by other lawmakers, opposes the move and has submitted an amendment to scale back the tax increase to 28%, rather than 42%.
To overcome the party spat, Giorgetti this month said he was ready to review the measure by considering different forms of taxation.
The co-ruling Forza Italia party led by Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani also promoted an amendment to keep focusing the impact of Italy’s web tax on big tech such as Meta Platforms, Google and Amazon.
Italy in 2019 introduced a 3% levy on revenue from internet transactions for digital companies with annual sales of at least 750 million euros ($790 million) if at least 5.5 million are made in Italy.
Now, as part of the budget bill, the Treasury wants to remove these minimum conditions for the tax to be applied, in a move critics say would be a blow for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
If approved, Forza Italia’s amendment would preserve the two revenue floors.
Giorgetti has said that extending the scope of Italy’s web tax could help the government avoid clashes with the United States, which considers the scheme unfair discrimination as it mainly targets U.S. tech companies.
($1 = 0.9459 euros)
(Reporting by Giuseppe Fonte; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
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