Italy Puts Yacht Charters Under Investigation

by Ulrika Lomas, Tax-News.com, Brussels

13 August 2010

The Italian Revenue Agency has disclosed that it is investigating those yacht charter companies it considers to have been set up solely for tax avoidance reasons.

The leasing companies being checked are those established for the chartering of seagoing yachts or riverboats along the coasts of Liguria, Campania or the Adriatic, but which are allegedly set up to hide their actual objective – the personal use of the luxurious vessel concerned by their true owner.

More precisely, the Agency says, one is talking of boats of longer than 20m with a value of more than EUR1.5m (USD1.9m). More than 100 investigators from the Agency are, at present, touring Italy to uncover these sole-purpose companies which, as it says, “leak water”.

The companies being checked usually have only one shareholder, or very few taken from the same family, with the minimum of share capital (EUR10,000). They normally have only one vessel to be leased, which is not available on the general market but is actually exclusively reserved for use by its real owner. In fact, the boat is leased only to the shareholder(s), or even to another company with the same shareholder(s).

They represent, therefore, in the view of the Agency, ‘companies of convenience’ that are only used in order to hide the evasive character of the underlying operation, which allows the real owner to obtain numerous fiscal, economic and financial advantages.

For example, it continues, the actual owner of the vessel is distinguished from the charter company, which benefits from limited liability. The company avoids the payment of the value added tax (VAT) on the costs associated with the purchase of the chartered vessel. VAT is also recovered on the maintenance of the boat and on its equipment, while VAT and duty (about 50% of its price) are not applied on the diesel it uses.

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