Provincial tax court of Lodi, decision 159/2/06. A principle affirmed before it became the usual language of Italian tax practice.
What the case was about
Following an inspection, the Revenue raised an assessment against the shareholders of a limited company, relying on an error the company had made over the costs declared when applying for a tax amnesty.
The court held that an excusable error of that kind cannot by itself found an assessment against the shareholders. And it went further: the duty to behave in good faith, which the Italian Taxpayer's Charter imposes, binds the administration as much as the citizen. The Revenue cannot rely on the taxpayer's mistake while making none of its own effort to establish what actually happened.
Why it matters
Italian tax litigation is built on presumptions: the authority assumes, and the taxpayer must disprove. Decisions that mark the limit of that reversal are worth more than their own facts, because they can be used in every later case.
For a foreign taxpayer there is a second lesson. An Italian assessment does not go away by being ignored, and the time limit for challenging it is short. What looks like a clerical dispute hardens into an enforceable debt with surprising speed.
If this is your situation
The first question is never whether the assessment is right. It is when it was served, and how many days are left — everything else follows from that.