Territorialità e tassazione dei dividendi internazionali

Taxation of cross-border dividends encompasses two paramount problems of tax law: economic/juridical double taxation and allocation of cross-border income between sovereign tax jurisdictions. For equity and efficiency reasons, cross-border dividends should be taxed not more nor less than domestic dividends, to avoid economic and juridical double taxation. To this end, dividend taxation can not be handled as a stand-alone issue. It should be better coordinated with the taxation of the underlying corporate profits. Integrating these two layers of taxation at international level involves the additional problem of dividing the tax base among tax jurisdictions, based on a territorial link. A good approach to address both these issues (double (non) taxation and income allocation) is the unitary taxation pattern, whereby corporate profits are taxed once, upon realization, at the rate of the source jurisdiction, whereas dividends are exempt in the hand of the shareholder – both in the source and in the residence jurisdiction. This article analyses the current status of the domestic and supra-national tax regime from the Italian perspective; describes why and to what extent it does not fully comply with the unitary taxation pattern; puts forward proposals for correcting these biases, corroborating them with legal theoretical background and limited economic references. With a view to integrating corpo- rate and shareholders taxation, the article finally advocates the elimination of the source States’s taxing right upon dividend distributions, especially for intercom- pany dividends. As for Italian domestic law, it calls for a razionalization of the mechanics for eliminating economic double taxation on certain foreign sourced dividends, which appear not to be fully in line with EU law.