The Council of State yes aligns with the pronunciations already made regarding the 'Tax' of 0,5% on bets to be allocated to a Salva Sport fund and accepts the appeal of Bet365, a gaming concessionaire in Italy.
“The detrimental effect” for the appellant company “derived from the fact of being considered a taxable person for indirect tax at a rate of 0,5% on the overall revenue deriving from the collection of bets for the reference period, rather than just up to the maximum thresholds foreseen for the financing of the Fund for the relaunch of the national sports system (40 million euros for the year 2020 and 50 million euros for the year 2021)".
“The dispute – we read in the sentence – does not concern the payment of the amounts due, for the reference period, until the aforementioned allocation limits are reached, necessary to cover the cost of establishing and operating the Fund (all amounts already fully paid and of which the concessionaire does not contest the deficiency), but instead concerns the additional amounts requested in payment, always calculated at a percentage of 0,5% for the reference period, but on all the overall revenue from the collection of bets, regardless of the the Fund's financing thresholds have already been reached".
“The interpretative conclusion of the legislation contained in the legislative decree no. 34/2020, which had already been reached on the basis of domestic law, i.e. that, since said legislation was introduced as an emergency decree to deal with the economic emergency that arose following the closure and restrictions on economic activities , with the aim of finding the resources necessary to finance measures to support and relaunch the economy and, as far as art. 217, of the sports sector, the purpose constraint on the levy can only be supported, in terms of the stability of the system, by the existence of serious and serious imperative needs of general interest, which cannot be reduced to the generic 'fiscal reason'.
In fact, if the principle of alignment or correspondence between the amount of the forced levy and the maximum limit on the allocation were denied, which should therefore be understood (also) as an (implicit) limit to the levy itself, the practical effect that would be produced would be to finance public spending in general, as the law does not reveal further or different specific imperative reasons of public interest to be pursued".
To this end, moreover, they could never make up for the unspecified "homologous purposes" also proposed by the Revenue Defense in its defense writings, both because they are not verbatim foreseen by the law, and because they are the result, at most, of a 'spontaneous' destination and of mere fact by the State in favor of sports and amateur associations, i.e. such as not to allow both from the perspective of European and national law, the necessary objectivity and measurability of the needs actually desired and pursued by the legislator
