The Supreme Court, with judgment no. 5141/22, filed on 14 February, was called upon to rule in a case of a “virtually blank” tax return due to a failure to fill in the RS box, while not missing out on the opportunity to firmly reaffirm the principle of legality in criminal matters.
The ruling stressed the distinction between the case of omitted tax return and fraudulent tax return. The former, provided for by art. 5 of legislative decree 74/2000, must be reserved only for the most extreme scenarios, such as the non-existence of the document or failure to transmit it to the Office. In the event that a taxpayer files the tax return, but fails to fill in a specific box, a different crime referred to in art. 4 of legislative decree 74/2000 applies.
The Territorial Court of Naples, being faced with a different fact than the one disputed, formulated an inadmissible interpretation by analogy: for this reason the judgement for the offence of omitted tax return must be annulled (with immediate transmission of the documents to the Public Prosecutor in charge of the application of art.521 of the Italian penal code).
Marta Sottocasa, Atty.