ROME — Every fall, as the Italian parliament struggles to find new revenue sources that will help the country support itself, talk inevitably turns to taxing something near and dear to the lusty Italian heart: porn.A proposal to add a 25-percent excise tax to the purchase of all sexually explicit materials has been on the table since it was proposed in 2002 by Vittorio Emanuele Falsita, then the parliamentary representative of the Italian political party Forza Italia. (Coincidentally, that’s the same party current Italian President Silvio Berlusconi founded in 1994.)
The proposal has been defeated every year — until this one.
Last week, while the U.S. celebrated Thanksgiving, the Italian Council of Ministers approved the tax, saying it was necessary to boost state revenues during a period of unprecedented global financial “crisis.”
The tax will be applied to “all literary, theatrical, cinematographic, audiovisual and multimedia works, including those made and reproduced with computer or tele-matic support, in which there are sexually explicit images or scenes… by adults,” according to Section 31.
The government is expected to issue regulations defining the difference between pornography and art within the next two months. Especially in Italy, which has a long tradition of sexually explicit graphic and cinematic art, that job may be more difficult than it sounds.
