Challenges and opportunities for 2019

As every year, 2019 will be full of updates that will challenge economic operators on many fronts.

Before discussing the budget law, the year has started with a big update, i.e. electronic invoicing, which can be substantially applicable to all companies. Although electronic invoicing can lead to some first and normal operating difficulties, this obligation can be turned into a management opportunity. In fact, electronic invoicing can be useful to improve internal management, collection and payment procedures, management control, and flow optimization, and not only to save space and reduce the consumption of paper. Therefore, electronic invoicing is not only a tax challenge.

Over 2019 we will be able to evaluate the opportunities brought by the so-called tax regularization act “pace fiscale”. Many different regularization opportunities have been introduced, including tax assessment deeds, tax audit reports, tax bills and pending tax litigation proceedings. Even in this case, this does not only involve an evaluation of the tax convenience, but also of the opportunities for the assets situation that will be represented in financial statements at 31 December 2018.

Also financial statements will be subject to many updates, such as the new accounting standards (e.g. OIC 11, but also IAS/IFRS), the updates on the obligation, for some entities, to prepare a non-financial report to be revised by auditors together with the financial statements.

Budget law 2019 is also a big and longed-for issue for this year.

Lastly, we are still waiting for the publication of the legislative decree concerning the reform of business crisis, updating the former bankruptcy law. The decree includes almost 400 articles that unify the different insolvency procedures and will also bring some corporate updates, such as the extension of the tasks of the Board of Statutory Auditors and the extension of legal control on S.r.l. companies (new art. 2477 of the Italian Civil Code).