argomento: Profili europei e Internazionali - Legislazione e prassi

PAROLE CHIAVE: state revenue; ability to pay; web; digital economy; digital services; data mining; liquid tax; liquid income; liquid added value; liquid withholding tax; pillar one; pillar two; global minimum tax

di Marco Versiglioni

1. First, I would like to give to the Authorities and to all those present a cordial greeting and a warm thank you for taking part in this meeting.

A special greeting and thanks to the Guardia di Finanza Corps for having granted me the honour of being able to make an ethical-scientific speech on a particularly complex issue, on such an important occasion and in front of such an authoritative and qualified public.

Finally, I would like to warmly greet the students, their widespread participation makes me particularly happy.

2. The title of the topic entrusted to me is Legislation for the safeguarding of State revenues and taxation of the digital economy (1).

It is a fascinating title, to say the least, because it relates the "taxation of the digital economy" not to any legislation, but to legislation that has a dual function: the general function, to make everyone contribute to public spending according to their ability to pay, and a special function, and this is the peculiarity, to safeguard State revenue.

Therefore, reasoning mathematically, I need to introduce a legal system made of two functions, each of which has its own set of solutions; that is, in order to reach a verifiable or a falsifiable conclusion, I need to identify the intersection of the two respective sets of solutions^-mv (M. Versiglioni, Legistica, ‘diritto matematico‘ e ‘diritto digitale’, in Innovazione e diritto, 2015. Id., Mathematical Law, in DTI, 2017. Id., Diritto matematico^-mv, Diritto con verità^-mv e diritto senza verità^-mv, Pisa, 2020).

Let's start by looking more closely at the two functions.  

If safeguarding of revenue implies taxpayer compliance, then the title invites us to focus our attention on the enormous practical problem of the effective fulfilment of the tax due on the Digital Economy.

This problem is downstream of many other upstream problems: how to identify the actual taxpayer (e.g. who is a digital taxpayer)? Where is he be located (e.g. in a tax haven)? What is the taxable case (e.g. what is a digital service)? Who can ascertain how digital things really are if, in order to know their true nature, technological knowledge is needed that only very few countries possess (e.g. who knows the algorithm of any common search engine)? Once complex international legal provisions have been written, who interprets them (e.g. is the Italian translation correct and are the concepts expressed by others similar to ours)?

If, therefore, the "safeguarding" of State revenue is the focal part of the discourse, if "safeguarding" implies justice and justice implies truth, then in the title of the intervention there is, in fact, the exhortation to reflect on what kind of legislation aimed at taxing the Digital economy can serve as a real tool to actually ensure a State revenue, that is, a real positive flow of liquidity that really passes from the assets of a real taxpayer to the State treasury. 

In summary, therefore, the question posed by the title is this: what law can actually realize the entry of taxes really due on the digital economy while respecting the Italian Constitution, European standards and international standards?

In the thirty minutes granted to me, I hope to reach at least three conclusions, one methodological and two application-oriented.

The methodological conclusion is derived from the theory that hypothesizes legislation dedicated to a tax model that I called Liquid Tax^-mv (M. Versiglioni, Reddito Liquido e Imposta liquida. Riforma fiscale e modello logico dell’Imposta, in Riv. tel. dir. trib., 2021) and which has a conceptual DNA made up of elements that all the inhabitants of the earth are well aware of, namely "liquidity transfer", "liquidity inflow" and "liquidity outflow". Therefore, elements that are certain, well ascertainable and not facts subject to evaluation or infinitely debatable. Liquid Tax can be expressed as Liquid Income Tax or Liquid Value Added Tax.   

The application-oriented conclusions concern, respectively, the digital services that the user voluntarily purchases on the web by paying a liquid sum and the extraction of the raw digital data that the user involuntarily makes available free of charge (usually to a non-resident) every time he uses the web equally free of charge (therefore without any transfer of liquidity).

3. I have selected these two application-oriented themes, taking inspiration from “living law” which, for the common good, the Guardia di Finanza applies every day.

In fact, by doing so, I will be able to benefit from the invaluable results (of billions of euros) that the action of the Guardia di Finanza achieves by combating evasion and avoidance both on digital services and on the extraction of raw data.

On the other hand, as for regulations, an international model based on two pillars is about to be approved for taxing multinationals.

The first pillar assumes as a tax index the "creation of value" and proposes to estimate, through predetermined parameters, the share of the value referable to each of the territories in which the multinational operates (regardless of income).

The second pillar sets a minimum percentage of taxation to be paid in each territory (apparently superficially, regardless of income).

This is similar to what is already provided for in Italy by legislation related to the tax on digital services, which is equal to 3% of revenues (again, apparently, regardless of income).

Lastly, Italy is also implementing a recent directive that introduces the obligation for platform operators to provide information on the revenues produced by certain categories of operators through the web (e-commerce, short rentals, car rentals, etc.). This is perhaps because the only way considered possible for the purposes of taxing these operators is the exchange of information between states (on the assumption that, in the absence of exchanges of information between states, tax entry appears difficult, if not practically impossible).

4. Looking at the cases taken from “living law”, what can be said about these legislations?

Would they be able to jointly implement, as in a Mathematical legal system^-mv, both the general function of making everyone contribute to public spending by reason of their ability to pay, and the special function of safeguarding State revenue?

I'd say no, a system of this kind probably wouldn't have a solution.

Let's see why this is so and what fuels this doubt.

First of all, these are legislations that we import; and this happens despite the fact that their Anglo-Saxon language (of a common type) is largely incompatible with ours (of a Roman or continental type).

In addition, they seem to preserve the traditional logical model of income tax, but in reality they constitute new "single taxes" that (still in an Anglo-Saxon way, of an analytical type) have very little in common with that (general type) model.

In fact, recent disciplines do not seem to correspond to many of the principles that govern international tax law and that for decades have ensured fiscal peace between more than a hundred countries, including the development of thousands of bilateral treaties.

   They therefore seem to create an internationally unsustainable divergence between consolidated customary or conventional rules aimed at avoiding double income taxation and new rules that are very precarious and uncertain and do not correspond or are not consistent with the former.

Examples of these new rules are those that seem to want to avoid double taxation on the creation of value without taking into adequate account, at least prima facie, that not every creation of value constitutes income; then there are the rules that, in reality, are completely disinterested in income.

This divergence generates much curiosity, but also much perplexity, particularly as, still with Anglo-Saxon logic, the new rules will work on the basis of two premises which both appear Without truth^-mv and which, for this reason, pose a serious threat to the true safeguarding of State revenue in With truth^-mv tax systems like ours, which are of “rigid Constitution in the strong sense”.

Indeed, the factual premise, that is, the case, is without truth both because it consists of an unknowable mix that irreversibly blends three distinct components (income, creation of value and added value), and because it is obtained through averages, which are logically incompatible with the truth of the concrete case (M. Versiglioni, Prova e studi di settore, Milan, 2007; Id., Giustizia predittiva, Giustiziamatematico-statistica^-mv e Studi di giurisprudenza^-mv, in Loading prodigit, edited by A. Marcheselli and E. Marello, Riv. Dir. Trib., 2022, 105 et seq).

The normative premise is also without truth because it is not attributable to the customary principles that, as I said, concern income, and because it does not even seem suitable to make the relationship between itself and the principle of reciprocity true, a principle which, as is known, constitutes the fundamental parameter of validity of any international norm that aims at true fiscal peace between countries.

In short, these disciplines seem to belong to the set of Laws without truth^-mv, that is, laws whose effectiveness, at least in the abstract, depend on the selfish diktat of the economically or politically dominant country, both internationally and at the European level.

The problems that these new disciplines pose in terms of ability to pay seem even more serious, especially as regards the element that most concerns the safeguarding of State revenue, that is, the true fulfilment of a true taxation on a true index of ability to pay.

There is no time here to analytically examine these critical aspects but their probability seems intuitive simply by reasoning through the usual hermeneutical canons established by the Constitutional Court (as well as by the Court of Justice of the European Union) in terms of effectiveness.

5. Turning to VAT and taking inspiration from the sensational cases ascertained by the Guardia di Finanza, there is an increasing frequency in Italy and in Europe of illegal conduct relative to revenue (e.g. carousel fraud, false invoicing, assignment of non-existent receivables, undue compensation). In light of the above, it is reasonable to assume that such conduct will be facilitated by the digital economy, especially with regard to digital services.

As for the collection of personal data, an innovative assessment method was implemented by the Guardia di Finanza against a multinational company, leader in its sector, in order to ascertain (for almost one billion euros) the "exchange" that takes place between the free provision of personal data by the user and the provision of a free service by social platforms known to all.

A valuable innovation, probably replicable, as all the newspapers have written about it recently.

6. So what about the current and future VAT legislation?

VAT legislation, especially since it is of strict European derivation, has perhaps become unnecessarily broad and conceptually chaotic.

In my humble opinion, a strong decluttering is necessary: first the superfluous should be thrown away and then what is really needed for a true safeguarding of State revenue should be reordered: where there is too much law, there is little State revenue. 

First of all, the semantic problem appears to be of no small importance: if translation errors are proportional to the number of words in the law, then it becomes easy to predict that many State revenues will probably be lost if the text of the directive is very long. Let's take for example the last directive in this matter; it seems so long and complex that, even in its original language, it seems almost a non-directive: if this happens when reading the text written in its original language, think about what can happen when reading its translation!  

But let's put aside this nominal profile and look at what happens to the concepts or to the numerous European definitions; for years we have been witnessing an unsuccessful attempt to grasp the new forms of consumption of goods, services and, above all, hybrids in the progress of digital technology.

In fact, without prejudice to the historical premises, if the original logical model of the tax does not change, such an attempt, in order to become fruitful, would presuppose a daily correction (that is, a Dynamic law rectification^-mv) of current European legislation.

This activity is obviously incompatible with the typical timeframe of a legislative source such as the European one because it is organised through lengthy gestation directives that the individual national parliaments must then transpose with implementation times that are often no less lengthy.

Therefore, for VAT legislation, at least according to the current logical model of this tax, it is impossible to copy in good time the evolution of society in its progress towards the complete dematerialisation of goods, the virtualisation of services and the genesis of hybrids.

VAT, as it is today, maintains the logical structure and way of functioning of a documentary and accounting type devised long ago, when both the technological and the  economic-social contexts were very different from those of today.

But above all, the ethics of that period have ceased to function.

Since the safeguarding of State revenue is at the centre of the discourse, it should be noted that today's ethics no longer allow the trustful (perhaps careless) approach of giving the private individual the free and autonomous power to create tax liquidity of any amount (even billions of euros) simply by writing an invoice.

The number of taxpayers authorised to write invoices is too great and therefore impossible to control, especially in Italy; the number of taxpayers who, unfortunately, retain for themselves, appropriating it, the liquidity created with the issuance of the invoice is also too great: being tax liquidity, it should always, without exception, produce a flow of incoming tax liquidity.

A similar thing happens when the subject records an invoice received from third parties and immediately creates tax liquidity in the form of credit that can be refunded, offset or transferred, even without having paid anything.

In fact, there seems to be a growing number of subjects who, by combining the new regulation of the business crisis with the current but obsolete mechanism of VAT (or of the withholding tax), pay all the other creditors and then access the agreement and/or liquidation procedures, provided for by this recent regulation, leaving the State as the sole residual creditor (either for VAT charged and collected by clients but not paid back to the State or for withholdings retained and not paid back to the State).

In short, current ethics no longer appear compatible with these mechanisms as they were regulated in the 1970s both for VAT and for withholding purposes. 

The current legislation on reimbursement should therefore be quickly modified and updated, attributing to the withholding of tax the vital merit that society must attribute to it for the true realisation of State revenue.

On the other hand, the legislation related to the objective base of VAT also appears outdated and at the complete mercy of a very rapid evolution of science and social ethics.

Moreover, it is an evolution that no longer takes the trouble to intervene gradually on the accessories or ornaments of material and immaterial things in order to adapt them and make them consistent with the slow emergence of new economic and social needs, as was once the case.

Today's evolution changes the true nature of the things we once made use of (without abusing them) very quickly and surprisingly, I would say even in a single instant (M. Versiglioni, Abuso del diritto. Logica e Costituzione, Pisa, 2016).

At times it becomes very difficult to identify, qualify and classify what this nature is, at least in light of the abstract definitions that are now outdated but still provided for by VAT law: a good or a service or instead, as is increasingly the case, a hybrid?

So the question about what should be done arises continually, but there is no longer a reliable answer in the current legislation.

The same phenomenon occurs with regard to the forms and types of contracts: the case contested in an innovative way by the Guardia di Finanza to which I referred earlier constitutes an emblematic paradigm.

The intensity of the problem is not reduced if we turn to the examination of the subjective assumption and ask ourselves: who is today the formal taxable person or even the substantial taxable person of the VAT?

It seems sufficient to take inspiration from the judgements of the Court of Justice of the European Union and observe that even the Court must constantly ask itself questions of this kind.

How many cases similar to those dealt with by the Court of Justice appear on the web every day?

The answer is, very many, and they are cases mostly Infinitely disputable^-mv or even without truth^-mv, and therefore a priori not controllable.

Until this new digital mutability of natural law is codified first in a Mathematical law^-mv and then in a Digital law^-mv (M. Versiglioni, Logistica, ‘diritto matematico’ e ‘diritto digitale’, cit.; Id., Se l’algoritmo scrive la sentenza, che almeno rispetti la logica, in Il Sole24-ore, 10/2/2020), it will progressively attack and eventually destroy  the integrity of the semantic and conceptual definitions that VAT has carried with it for decades: if they worked before, they are now absolutely unable to do so, creating enormous damage to State revenue (for a broad and detailed review of the reasons underlying this finding reiterated in the text, see the recent interesting monographic work by F. Cannas, EU VAT categories and the digital economy, Turin, 2022, passim).

The speed of change in the scientific and ethical context of markets and business activities is such that, as long as the traditional logical model of taxation is maintained, legislation whose function is not only the contribution of all to public spending by reason of their ability to pay but also the safeguarding of State revenue, has no possibility of conceiving, qualifying and taxing new subjects (Ones^-mv) or new fiscally relevant tax bases (Units^-mv) in good time (for more details, see M. Versiglioni, ‘Unita’’ e ’Uni’ del e nel diritto tributario in RTDT, 2013, 153 et seq.).

Before that (already obsolete) legislation is able to effectively perform its function of safeguarding State revenue, the particular new one^-mv or the particular new unit^-mv will already have evolved or disappeared or become another one^-mv or unit^-mv that such legislation could not deal with by exercising the function of safeguarding of State revenue.

7. In light of these premises, let us therefore ask ourselves the initial question: what legislation could tax the digital economy while truly safeguarding State revenue in compliance with the Constitution, European standards and international standards?

Before answering, I should express the degree of feasibility of the answer that I am about to propose: I am going to formulate a measurable hypothesis in terms of a non-trivial practical possibility.

Let's think about what Italy could do in practice on its own, while respecting the agreements made with the European Union and with the 93 countries with which it has concluded international conventions against double income taxation.

For reasons of time, we cannot examine the legislation, albeit viable and important, which, exploiting digital technology and big data, aims at safeguarding State revenue by acting through digital controls. This is legislation that is concerned with countering the wrong of evasion or avoidance when the wrong has already occurred or is in progress.

For now, let us focus only on the prevention of these ills, that is, on what can be done, perhaps more easily and more effectively, to avert them.  

Let us then put ourselves in a hypothetical perspective, first general and then more detailed.

From a general point of view (the one in which the first of the two functions of which I spoke at the beginning must be observed), we hypothetically assume that effective ability to pay is defined pursuant to articles 2, 3, and 53 of the Italian Constitution, in the form that seems to me best able to identify  it, namely: everyone is required to contribute to public spending according to his effective ability to pay, that is, when this ability becomes liquid and exceeds the minimum living amount, or in other words, when the effective ability to pay, in its liquid measure, exceeds the total sum, also liquid, consisting of the tax to be paid and the minimum living amount. 

Read in mathematical terms, [the expression so often used by the Constitutional Court ,"effective ability to pay", would be truly measurable and would find its true measure in "liquid ability to pay", in the sense that the latter would represent the highest degree of truth, that is (≡), based on today's context of "effective ability to pay"]^-mv.  

If this were, as it seems to be, the current parameter of ethical and scientific validity of any new tax model that would make that function true, then this model would be Liquid Tax^-mv and in addition to being consistent with the Constitution, it would have at least the following characteristics:

1. it would be able to speak to everyone and be understood by everyone because everyone knows, without even thinking about it, what is meant by a liquidity transfer, a liquidity outflow or a liquidity inflow;
2. it would therefore be able to include everyone in the measurable set of the knowability of the tax phenomenon^-mv;
3. it would be a true element of the Family of sets^-mv that I call Law^-mv according to the definition that I have been proposing for some time, namely: to give to each his own and to receive from each his own^-mv; as such, it would be able to adapt in a flexible and pluralistic way to the individual case, so that the relationship between the case and its norm would always remain the same for everyone;
4. it would be consistent with European Union standards and international standards;
5. it would create the measurable entities of economic and social energy^-mv so necessary for economic and social development, due to a true Mathematical proportion^-mv (generational investment: family = business investment: business^-mv). Thus, for example, any generational investment made by a family, qualified as a new fiscal one^-mv, or any business investment made by a company, qualified as a traditional fiscal one^-mv, could be immediately fully deducted from the calculation of the liquid income^-mv without having to access any depreciation or evaluation procedure;
6. it would be Mutable^-mv each time: sometimes proportional (if as advance payment), sometimes progressive (if as payment in full), sometimes provisional (if as advance payment), sometimes definitive (if as payment in full), according to the relationship [provisionality : proportionality = definitiveness : progressivity]^-mv. In this way it could truly comply with the evolution of the liquid tax^-mv , which is an Immortal tax^-mv, during the entire lifetime of each taxpayer, whether a natural or legal person, whether a human or humanoid, in accordance with the continual mutability of the taxpayer’s liquid ability to pay^-mv;
7. it would be self-sustaining, that is, able to support itself and not imply the initial or annual absorption of additional public resources in deficit. For example, since the total income tax revenue that the State achieves from all businesses (sole proprietorships, corporations, and commercial entities) amounts to about 60 billion euros annually, a customised withholding tax (note, on advance payment), of between 1.5% and 3% and applied to all current payment transactions between all businesses, could produce revenue for an amount that is similar to, if not higher than the current one, and much more efficiently than today. This taxation on the advance payment would then be followed by progressive taxation on the balance if, and insofar as, the company, corporation or commercial entity had not made sufficient business investments to ensure that the withholding taxes were able to cover the final tax calculated progressively;
8. it would be simple and able to greatly reduce the number and complexity of the provisions in force. For example, as far as income taxes are concerned, all special regimes would be cancelled, there would be only one category of taxable income, equal for all, and the TUIR (Tax Consolidation Act) could shrink from today's 190 long articles to no more than 30 short articles; in effect, over 180 articles of the TUIR appear almost useless or, in any case, very inefficient, if, according to 2021 data, only about 10 articles produced 76% of State revenue;
9. lastly, it would be cultural, that is, able to positively affect the tax culture of each country because it would discourage, to the point of nullifying, the interest of individuals to evade or avoid taxes.

According to this logical model of the liquid tax^-mv: i) the new tax base, i.e. the liquid income^-mv, would comply with the following principle: only those who in the tax period have achieved a positive net cash flow at least equal to the taxes to be paid are required to pay the tax; ii)  the new tax base, i.e. the Liquid Value Added^-mv, would  mean that VAT becomes deductible only after payment; the invoice would no longer have the ability to create currency, i.e. to create tax liquidity, as this capacity is subject to the annual illegal withholding of tax liquidity for many billions of euros; indeed, if one really wanted to safeguard State revenue, then in the exchanges preceding consumption, the intermediate VAT rate should be equal to 1%, while the final normal rates existing today would not be modified, but would be applied only as the last step carried out in favour of the final consumer, when they really serve to create real State revenue (instead of losing State revenue for many billions of euros each year as before); iii) the liquid withholding^-mv (on advance payment) would be made by  banks alone, while the current tax withholding agents, including those who operate withholding taxes without creating tax liquidity because they withhold it illegally, would disappear; this would make it possible to easily recover many billions of euros each year.

In light of these premises, we shall try to hypothesise which legislation could truly safeguard State revenues in relation to the two chosen cases.

8. Let’s assume that the purchase of these services implies a digitised payment by the Italian operator in favour of a subject who did not have a permanent establishment in Italy or who did not have a bank account (a qualified account) in Italy intended for the calculation of the liquid income^-mv.

If the income becomes taxable, whatever the source, at the time it becomes liquid and if all the flows are subject to a withholding tax on the income of the recipient, then the web, being made up of digital payments, seems to constitute the optimal environment for liquid withholding^-mv.

In fact, the multinationals of the web would not be treated dissimilarly, as is being done by resorting to "single tax", but would be treated in the same manner as all other Ones^-mv, that is, as all other resident or non-resident subjects with or without a permanent establishment in Italy.

In fact, the multinational receiving a cash flow from a qualified account in Italy would be subject:

1. to a personalised withholding tax in advance (1.5% - 3%) if the multinational had a permanent establishment in Italy or, failing that, if it had a qualified account in Italy through a tax agent;
2. to a definitive withholding tax (not less than 15%) if, as a non-resident, it did not wish, of its own volition, to appoint a tax agent in Italy and declare a qualified account in Italy.

All this would generate very significant State revenue in a simple and secure way.****

9. As for the extraction of scientific and ethical data, the definition of what I call law stated in the introduction logically gives the phenomenon its suitable means, just as a man does naturally when unscrewing a screw with a screwdriver and unscrewing a nut with a wrench^-mv.

It seems that the treatment that is intrinsic to data mining (that is, truly its own^-mv), according to the ethical sense common to all, should be the same as the treatment that is reserved for those who extract, creating value, what for others would be of no value without the action of those who extract it^-mv.

For reasons of time, let's leave aside the microeconomic aspect (which was dealt with by the Guardia di Finanza) and observe the phenomenon at the macroeconomic level, in its universality.

At least with reference to the extraction of raw data, which is not yet usable data, if we consider the aforementioned definition of law^-mv, the mining resource that derives from it and that represents our national identity in this new world and will represent it even more in the world to come, seems to constitute unavailable capital value^-mv.

If State legislation for the safeguarding of State revenues (this time non-fiscal) qualified big data (understood as universality) referable to the entire territory or even to individual regional territories as unavailable assets, then, perhaps, the phenomenon could be treated not with a tax (or at least not only with a tax referred to individuals).

That collective phenomenon, that common good, should instead become the subject of agreements between the State and/or the Regions and the web multinationals.

These agreements should provide for the payment of a Royalty connected specifically to the mining of data representative of the identity of that territory^-mv (Big data royalty^-mv or BDR^-mv).

Moreover, unlike what happens for other resources (I am thinking of oil or other hydrocarbons), what is extracted via the web from territories where citizens live who unconsciously provide those data or who, in any case, are subtly forced to allow the extraction of those data, is not burned with use, but has an ongoing value, covering a broad time spectrum (being a value with long repeated fecundity).

It would therefore be a monthly or annual royalty with an indefinite duration (until the concession is revoked), the liquidity of which should be attributed to the State or Regions.

Even assigning modest values to the percentage amount of royalty due per inhabitant, the amount of the non-fiscal revenues would be very significant and could be used to finance public spending or to greatly reduce, if not completely eliminate, other State or local revenues that would otherwise tend to discourage the economic development of that territory. 

In short, perhaps, without further increasing the tax burden, non-fiscal revenue could be obtained that exceeds the tax revenue expected to be obtained with the legislation in progress, which seems excessively obsequious to the multinationals and therefore not true, if placed in relation to the ethical sense common to all.

This royalty would be deductible from the income of the multinationals which, in this way, would not be subject to double income taxation or violations of other customary principles.

I am well aware that web multinationals, if not the governments that safeguard their actions, may not be willing to stipulate such agreements, even after the States have qualified this data as unavailable (and therefore, make the big data extracted from a territory unavailable).

Such an implicit rhetorical question could well be answered with another rhetorical question: what value can the multinational web company that owns the best existing algorithms have if it does not possess the data or, rather, if it does not have the big data necessary to feed the algorithms of Artificial Intelligence or 5G? Needless to say: zero value.

In addition, a constructive contribution comes from the logic of a contract that is correct and in good faith.

In the negotiating composition between parties acting in accordance with correctness and good faith, while a decomposed reaction (illogical duties) could logically be explained by an action that is also decomposed (illogical web tax), such a reaction could not logically be explained if the action were valid in an ancient and customary relational parameter and therefore ethically pre-shared by the ethical sense common to all parties.

Ultimately, if only raw data is mentioned, the provision of the royalty would prevent the multinational from any foreseeable historical dispute on the parameter of identification of the territories relevant for tax purposes for the activities that create value (which are normally carried out outside those territories).

On the other hand, the solution proposed by one of the two parties would have the merit of being validated by the relationship (in this case, true) between itself and the consolidated customary rules (which concern the extraction for profit of resources found in the territories of others) and that a counterparty acting correctly and in good faith, that is, a counterparty acting according to the common ethical sense of all, could not logically refuse to accept.

10. In conclusion, having posed the initial question and mathematically outlined the legal system consisting of the two relationships that it contemplates, the intersection of their sets of solutions is demarcated by the following reasoning: if law is to give to each his own and receive from each his own, if for a man it is natural to give a screwdriver to unscrew a screw and receive a screw from the unscrewing, then it is natural to give liquid tax to the taxation of the digital economy and receive liquid tax from the taxation of the digital economy^-mv.

This reasoning is not precluded by the norms (constitutional, European or international) that constitute a parameter of validity of the hypothesised legislation on liquid tax^-mv.

Indeed, on closer inspection, it is precisely these parametric norms that give each person what he needs to find and understand what he receives by mathematically coupling his scientific nature with his ethical nature^-mv.

The first delivers to everyone the calculated courage that is needed, just as science is needed, to move from the complex to the simple, but this step cannot be achieved without man’s ethical nature desiring the common good that serves to change things as they are today and to make simple what today, for reasons of convenience or selfishness, is complex^-mv.

This is the mathematical form of the infinite circular Mutability^-mvof giving and receiving without a before and without an after^-mv.

[1] Text of the report (with some modifications and supplements and with the addition of notes) presented at the Conference organised by the Guardia di Finanza on the theme "The Guardia di Finanza for the safeguarding of economic freedoms and social equity", held in Perugia, Palazzo dei Priori, Sala dei Notari, on 28/3/2023. 

*(Lavoro già edito sul fascicolo 1/2023 di Tax News e referato in lingua italiana)