What are the requirements that allow you to stay in the flat-rate scheme during 2023? But especially when there is a risk of slipping into the ordinary regime? Surely one of the most important themes of the new year is to understand what are the requirements that allow you to remain in the flat-rate regime and when you lose the right to take advantage of this important discount.
Through the 2023 Budget Law, some innovations have been introduced that involve favorable tax regimes. What were the most important innovations introduced this year? And above all, what do taxpayers really have to worry about? Let’s find out together.
Flat-rate scheme, the news for 2023
The 2023 Maneuver introduced its important innovations, which directly concern the flat-rate regime:
- i have increased revenue limits expected to be able to remain within this particular regime: it has gone from 65.000 euro ad 85.000 euro;
- the so-called was entered exclusion clause, a particular rule that allows you to continue to remain within this tax regime in the event that the new maximum limit, set at 85,000 euros, is exceeded. However, annual revenues must not exceed 100,000 euros: beyond this figure you immediately enter the ordinary regime.
A question that many readers are asking is what if a certain taxpayer has exceeded 65,000 euros in revenues in 2022? Can he continue to stay on the flat-rate scheme in 2023? The answer is yes: the new limits, which were introduced through the 2023 Budget Law, they also apply for the 2022 turnover. This is established by paragraph 54, letter a of article 1 of Law 190/2014, amended by Law 197/2022 – i.e. the 2023 Budget Law – which explicitly provides that “natural person taxpayers carrying on business, arts or professions apply the flat-rate regime referred to in this paragraph and in paragraphs 55 to 89 of this article if, at the same time, in the previous year they achieved revenues or received compensation, per year, not exceeding 85,000 euros“.
This essentially means that taxpayers who have achieved revenues between 0 and 85,000 euros in 2022, can continue to remain in the flat-rate scheme.
What changes in 2023
The most relevant innovations, for taxpayers, start right in the course of 2023. In the event that they should have revenues exceeding 100,000 euros – we are not wrong: that’s exactly one hundred thousand euros – in the 2024 tax return they will have to resume the taxation for Irpef and VAT purposes. Taxpayers are required to take this step too for what they had previously billed as a flat rate: attention, that exceeding this threshold has a heavy impact in fiscal and economic terms.
Basically, the legislator went to remedy a truly absurd situation from a legal and ethical point of view: in fact, no exclusion clause was envisaged within the tax period in which the limit established by law was exceeded. This means that, if during the year, the taxpayer had exceeded the threshold established by law, for that accounting year he would have paid the taxes respecting the rules of the flat-rate scheme. Only during the following year, he should have entered the ordinary regime.
In other words, the legislator has introduced a anti-avoidance clausealso reintroducing a principle of justice and fairness with respect to the situations that can arise.
Flat-rate scheme, the AdE circular
For greater clarity on the rules that determine whether or not to leave the flat-rate regime, of particular interest is the circular no. 9/E issued in 2019 by the Revenue Agency, which had been issued on the occasion of the previous increase in the revenue threshold. In confirmation of the regulatory guidelines that we have just clarified regarding 2022, the AdE offices wrote on that occasion:
The new revenue/fee limit of 65,000 euros must be verified, as can be seen from the express regulatory provision, with reference to the revenue limit achieved and the fees received in the year prior to the application of the lump sum regime. From this it follows that, for example, in the event that the taxpayer has exceeded the threshold of 30,000 euros in revenues/fees as at 31 December 2018, but has achieved/received, in the same tax period, revenues/fees not exceeding the threshold of 65,000 euros (therefore higher than the limits imposed by the old legislation but lower than those indicated by the new provision of the 2019 budget law), can remain in the flat-rate regime, applying the provisions introduced by the 2019 budget law.
