Corporate taxation in Italy

This chapter is part of a Research Handbook and therefore, rather than just providing a synchronic snapshot of the current state of the Italian corporate tax system, critically adopts a diachronic approach that looks at the evolution of the system over time, assessing which changes are ‘exogenous’ and which ‘endogenous’. ‘Exogenous’ changes are those that are the result of tax transplants and policy transfers and are identified on the basis of the conjecture that domestic corporate tax systems develop over time and are interconnected. This expectation relies on the functionalist paradigm according to which rules are means to address problems, so that transplants can be inspired by the functions of corporate tax measures of different national systems. By contrast, ‘endogenous’ changes are those that are the outcome of a domestic mechanism of generation of corporate tax rules. This expectation relies on the premise of ‘differentiation of legal cultures’ according to which the task of research primarily consists of penetrating, understanding and describing legal culture the way it is experienced locally.