[dathinab]

If you are found personally responsible for tax evasion >1e6€ then the minimal penalty is prison sentence without parole option. This is true for many EU countries including Italy. Idk. about the max. prison length in Italy for this but e.g. where I live in the EU you are likely looking at ~15 years for 1e9€ tax evasion.

The reason executives commonly avoid such penalties is because they avoid being found personally liable by claiming they didn't known, did misunderstood the situation, where deceived by others etc.

Through it should be noted that this case is a bit unusual and complicated. The tax dispute itself isn't as simple as Amazone directly having avoided paying their own taxes. And the case of missing taxes has already been settled. This new current investigations are criminal investigation (i.e. the failure of paying taxes is assumed to have been intentional instead of a booking error) and seem to be more targeting executives for having committed crimes (instead of targeting Amazone the company).

Or in other words, Italian prosecutors are feed up US companies not caring for EU law and no one being hold liable.

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(1): Without option to have it replaced with long time parole.

[jen20]

> The reason executives commonly avoid such penalties is because they avoid being found personally liable by claiming they didn't known, did misunderstood the situation, where deceived by others etc.

In the US, Section 302 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act exists literally to avoid this: the CEO and CFO have to personally sign filings so they cannot "not know" about financial disclosure content and have plausible deniability. While it only applies to public companies, the model seems reasonable to solve this case too.

[dathinab]

"not know" was oversimplified from me, technically such things exist in many countries, most likely also Italy.

But this comes back to how thinks always tend to be more complicate then "clean cut direct tax avoidance".

E.g. here the case isn't as simple as Amazone directly avoiding tax. But them instead to quote:

> Amazon's algorithm and operating models enabled the sale in Italy of goods from tens of thousands of non‑EU sellers - mostly Chinese - without disclosing their identity, helping them avoid paying value‑added tax (VAT)

I.e. Amazon is seen responsible for acting with sever levels of negligence with suspicion of intentionally enabling/supporting tax evasion to profit from it. (And honestly given the level of fraudulent-looking things Amazone allows vendors since a very long time, there is likely some truth to the "intentional supporting malicious actions" part.).

And in turn executives don't claim exactly "they didn't know". They claim they did know and started actions to fix the issue but it the actions failed so you tried other actions and if asked why no bigger actions are tried they claim it didn't look like it was "that" big of a problem through they now realize that was wrong.

The end effect is still the same they doge responsibility as-if they could just claim they didn't know, just with extra steps. Instead of "didn't know" I probably should have used "they claimed incompetence" (and external factors outside of their control) or similar.

[7bit]

> "not know" was oversimplified from me

Your entire post comes town to "oversimplified", to frame it generous. To frame it factual: misinformation.

> technically such things exist in many countries, most likely also Italy.

Yeah? Which ones? Quote the sections and then we'll continue ...

[dathinab]

Criminal Tax Code (D.Lgs. 74/2000)

but also overlaps with other laws, e.g. wrt. failing to act in due diligence

(other laws) like you are legally required to act with due-diligence, as CFO this inherently means knowing about the finances of the company so even if you claim you didn't know it's not exactly changing anything as not keeping up with your due diligence still makes you as likely

[7bit]

> If you are found personally responsible for tax evasion >1e6€ then the minimal penalty is prison sentence without parole option. This is true for many EU countries including Italy. Idk. about the max. prison length in Italy for this but e.g. where I live in the EU you are likely looking at ~15 years for 1e9€ tax evasion.

There's o EU wide tax law, so that statement is misleading at best and there's many places where that's false. You're spreading misinformation.

> The reason executives commonly avoid such penalties is because they avoid being found personally liable by claiming they didn't known, did misunderstood the situation, where deceived by others etc.

Misinformation again. This blanket statement in just false. Again, because there is no EU-wide law. It's up to the countries and they handle it very differently.