My thanks to Marco Bellezza for sending along this revised text of Italy's new "Google Tax" law and the associated translation. It's not just that all advertising and links purchased by economic actors in Italy must be purchased through someone registered for Italian VAT, it is that all advertisements and links viewable by anyone in Italy must also be so. The first is a clear breach of European Union rules concerning the Single Market, freedom of establishment and the VAT rules on distance selling and the second is simply so absurd as to have me laughing out loud. It betrays a woeful lack of knowledge about how the internet actually works. Think this through for a moment: the insistence is that anyone who comes to read this very page, written by an Englishman currently sitting in the Czech Republic on an American site can only show an Italian resident an advertisement or sponsored link if that was purchased through an agent with an Italian VAT registration? Some of the content here is sponsored ("Brand Voice" for example) and that has to be billed through Italy before it can be shown to an Italian? Every blogger in the world that carries an Amazon link now has to have an Italian VAT arrangement just in case an Italian comes by and sees that sponsored link?
Reported by Forbes.com 6 hours ago.
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