Italian Money Transfer Law Threatens Bitcoin Businesses
Responding to pressure, Italy has announced it will delay the law's implementation until July, 2014. It was previously enacted retroactively. When Italy announced last week that it would implement a 20% withholding tax on all inbound wire transfers to domestic personal bank accounts, some members of the global bitcoin community suggested the country could embrace bitcoin as a means to avoid payment. However, despite the optimism that bitcoin would not be affected by the move, which was aimed at cutting down on money laundering and tax evasion, representatives of Italy's bitcoin community....
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Italian business publication Il Sole reported last week on an automatic withholding measure on all transfers from abroad that the government says will be retroactive to February 1. Ostensibly, the measure is to prevent Italians from receiving unclaimed (and thus untaxed) income from abroad. It’s easier to illustrate this new law with an example: Let’s say I want to buy an apartment near Rome and transferred 20,000 EUR from my Swiss account to my own Italian bank account on February 4. The new law states that Italy will simply withhold 20%, or 4,000 EUR, from the transfer, pending proof....
An Italian news site reports the shocking decision by the government of Italy to impose a 20% withholding tax on all inbound wire transfers to Italian citizens. All international payment systems linked to a bank account, such as PayPal, Western Union and, of course, bank wires will be affected. This brutal tax, combined with already steep fees on legacy money transmission methods, could claim up to a third of the value of international transfers. Citizens may contact the relevant bureaucracy to plead for the return of their money, provided they can prove it to be outside the category of....
An Italian politician has asserted that the digital currency bitcoin is providing Italian mobsters with a legal way of entering the gambling sector. According to Lucrezia Ricchiuti, who is a member of the Italian Democratic Party, she believes that it is possible to link bitcoin to casino operations that are run by the mafia. She is of the opinion that due to a rise in the use of the currency this provides an ideal avenue for the gambling industry in the country to be utilized for tax evasion. In a report from Press Giochi, an Italian news site, she is reported as saying that it is....
Italy is known for pizza, spaghetti and, unfortunately, for its mafia. The mafia is a criminal world that controls the Italian drugs trade, prostitution, gambling and other illegal activities. Of course, all the money received from those illegal activities has to be laundered and it seems that the mafia has started to use Bitcoin for this task. At least this is what was suggested by the Italian Senator from the Democratic Party (Pd), Lucrezia Ricchiuti. As was originally reported by the magazine PressGiochi, the Italian mafia might start using Bitcoin to facilitate the development of its....
Italy's Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), an organ of the Central Bank in charge of combating money laundering and terrorist financing, issued a statement warning digital currency businesses to stay vigilant regarding suspicious activities due to the lack of AML/KYC requirements for Italian companies. In light of previous statements issued by the European Central Bank (ECB), the European Banking Authority (EBA), and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the FIU made a public announcement on February 2, emphasizing on the risk of money laundering and terrorist financing that are facing....