Italian fashion industry hopes to avert additional US tax

MILAN – The president of the Italian fashion chamber says he hopes that the U.S. administration will see that taxes imposed on fashion imports are already high, and will resist assessing an additional levy as being proposed.

Carlo Capasa said Tuesday that Italian luxury imports to the United States are taxed at an average rate of 20 per cent. He said that the fashion industry had been hoping to be able to do away with import taxes, “which are already high,” as part of EU-US free trade talks that stalled before the U.S. presidential election.

Capasa said that the fashion chamber wasn’t engaged in any discussions on the Republican proposal to impose a so-called Border Adjustment Tax on imports, because there was nothing concrete. But he emphasized that “fashion is already heavily taxed.”