The relationship between corporate control and tax law in the Italian and European context

This work aims to analyze the various definitions of “control” in the Italian jurisdiction for the Italian companies and the taxation effect that controlling or not a company could lead. Starting from the Civil Code as the heart of the jurisdiction the thesis will then study all the other different legislation in the Italian system, the so-called “special jurisdiction”, like the antitrust law, the procurement law or the banking law. There will be a lot of different ways in which the Italian law defines the control, and this led to some theoretical and practical problems. Then the study will move to consider the taxation effect on the “group”, will examinate when a certain number of companies will be considering a group and which will be the effect on assuring these situations. Then there will be a detailed study on the system of transfer pricing system and the effect that a manipulation of the transfer prices could have on the tax revenue, and a part on the system that the countries have to limit tax avoidance and tax evasion (like the arm’s length principle), following the OECD guidelines. The so-called controlled foreign companies (CFC) would even be a matter of study. Eventually, following the group’s definition, the thesis will investigate the tax effect of controlling one or more companies on the consolidated balance sheet. The work aims to show an overview of the tax effect on companies that have some controlled entities and with which they have business and try to find the best way of managing these situations to avoid Italy losing tax revenue, but, at the same time, avoid companies from being double taxed and allow them to do business.