tax system built around a particular product involves low or high levels of taxation, this will result in a low or high level of informal market activity respectively, compared to the formal market»6. So national taxation can influence the development of gastronomy (and of each agri-food product), having an impact on the decisionmaking choices of agricultural entrepreneurs, conditioning their insertion into certain economic markets rather than others. In general, the taxation of agri-food products falls, as regards income tax, under the taxation of agricultural income, given the close dependence of agricultural products on the land, and, as regards VAT, under the rules governing agricultural products. However, beyond the fact that some of these products, by their very nature, do not fall incontestably within the definition of agricultural products – and to which, therefore, this taxation would not be applicable in any case7 –, it is increasingly common for products that are symbols of gastronomy culture to have access to certain differentiated tax regimes that result in a significant reduction in taxation. In Italy, this has been the case with wine8 and, as will be explained in this paper, also the case of olive oil, mushrooms and truffles, which are the only agri-food products to which the legislator has dedicated a special tax regime. In the following pages, therefore, we will start with a description of the “ordinary” Italian regulations (applicable, for example, to cheeses), and then we will describe the constellation of favorable micro-regulations applicable to single products individuated by the legislator, with certain parallels with the regulations of other Member States. 2.1. Agricultural (and forestry) income taxation In Italian system, Articles 32-35 of Decree of the President of the Republic no. 917 of December 22, 1986 (Consolidated text of income tax; henceforth conventionally “TUIR”, which is the Italian acronym) regulate the taxation of agricultural income. 6 Italian Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies, Piano nazionale della filiera del tartufo 2017 – 2020 [National Truffle Supply Chain Plan 2017–2020], Summary Document, p. 37. 7 Consider mushrooms and truffles, which are mostly wild and are collected on land over which one does not always have real (or personal) property rights and, therefore, on which land income regulations cannot always be applied. Moreover, mere collecting does not follow the biological cycle. 8 For an analysis of wine from a tax perspective, see L. del Federico, P. Milioto, Direct and indirect agricultural taxation and the impact to the development of wine tourism, in Various Authors, Wine Tourism Law [edited by C. Torres, C. Lima Marques], Eshte, 2024, 235-247. 526 PAOLA MILIOTO
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