If I don't declare VAT, I get around ~30 days of leeway between the remiders to fines from our tax authority. If I didn't pay them for a year, they'd close my company for good.
How the hell are they "probing" for stuff that happened 7 years ago? What were they doing in the last 6.5 years? Does an italian mom and pop pasta restaurant get the same 7 year time period before they get probed for not paying VAT?
The theory (simplified) is the following (from what I can understand, most related news miss details):
1) each user when signing on the platform receives access in exchange for providing something (personal data) which Facebook/Instagram/Meta can later monetize (i.e. these data represent some value)
2) this is a form of barter and as such it is subject to VAT
What has been done is (seemingly) that of calculating (somehow) this value in Euro and consider it as a tax base for applying VAT.
Why stop at user registration? The service can collect user data for anonymous users just the same. And why stop at collection of user data being the quid pro quo in the exchange? If a site is letting people use it for free, the site must be getting something of value from that user no matter how undefinable, and that value can be taxed.
In some jurisdictions, contracts require a quid pro quo in order to be valid. I don't know whether Italy is one of them – but don't big tech people keep talking about how their services are a fair exchange for your data?[0]
Your "anonymous users" point seems reasonable. Your second does not: blatantly assuming that all free services are extracting a profit is foolish, and not something I've seen officials actually do.
[0]: https://www.theregister.com/2019/02/21/zuckerberg_privacy_in...
It is well established that a commercial transaction made through a barter bears no difference against the same transaction made through exchange of money.
The barter may be through exchange of goods or services.
There is a by now historical sentence here in Italy about the organizers of a contest and a local newspaper[0].
Basically the newspaper published about the contest (not as a news article but rather as an ad, including the rules, forms and what not) and the contest organizers had on all their printed material (forms to sign in, posters, etc.) a note like "in cooperation with newspaper name".
The Tax office considered this "exchange" as if it was two operations, one in which the newspaper sold publicity, and one in which they bought publicity on the contest material and it went through all the various courts until the Cassazione confirmed this approach.
That was a case between two entities subject to VAT, in the case of citizens (not subject to VAT) and an entity subject to VAT (Meta in this case) the part subject to VAT should (in theory) emit an "auto-invoice" and declare the VAT on the value. (or at least this is how I understand the matter, probably there will be more details in the news in the next few days/weeks).
[0] (in Italian):
https://sentenze.laleggepertutti.it/sentenza/cassazione-civi...
Pet theory: it's because not enough Italians speak English and Italy is the only place where Italian is a majority language. You end up with a culturally backwards country.
Even if it's your neighbor, it's still Italy!!
Something like that would never happen in another neighbor like Switzerland....no wait let me make another example...i meant Austria...oh wait...damn i stop here.
Bureaucracy in Italy can be very slow indeed. Not sure about this case in particular, but sometimes things take years to happen.