Benchmarking of the tax situation of Islamic financial instruments

Abstract

The ever-increasing trend of "Islamic finance" has prompted many European countries to implement very different solutions to meet the needs arising; in particular, the regulatory systems have been implemented with legislative measures, or rather, Financial Administration has introduced interpretations so as to regulate the tax burden on Islamic financial instruments. The contribution is addressed to the analysis of the current Italian legislation namely to the investigation of the tax effects generated by Islamic financial instruments on the different players by comparing with other countries such as the United Kingdom and France, whose experience in this regard has proved to be important to achieve an accurate understanding of the evolution of the rules governing such instruments. This paper is therefore aimed at suggesting simplifying guidelines (given the economic and financial implications) to be implemented in terms of legislation, with a view to providing an Italian standard for Islamic financial instruments so as to leverage the different synergies arising from the regulation of such instruments.