Prescription of tax and contribution assessments: the Covid extension has no effect on subsequent years

The combined reading of the rules therefore suggests making exclusive reference to the statute of limitations and forfeiture periods which expire by 31 December of the year in which the suspension of tax obligations and payments is ordered for and

The combined reading of the rules therefore suggests making exclusive reference to the statute of limitations and forfeiture periods which expire by 31 December of the year in which the suspension of tax obligations and payments for exceptional events is ordered, i.e. 2020

When we receive a payment notice from the tax authorities or another tax body (for example the municipality that asks us for the IMU, Enpam or INPS), one of the first things you look at is the date of the original provision. In fact, almost everyone knows that the notice of assessment must be notified, under penalty of forfeiture, by 31 December of the fifth year following the year in which the tax return to which it refers is submitted (art 43 Presidential Decree 600/73). So, to clarify, if the tax or contribution to which it is assessedament refers to the year 2015, the related complaint is that of 2016, and the deadline is 31 December 2021.

This unshakable belief was undermined in the pandemic period by some Government measures which, to facilitate the work of the offices that remained unprotected, they introduced an extension of the deadlines, on which the structures calibrated their production also in the following years. According to the provisions of the art. 67 of Legislative Decree 18/2020, the suspension from 8 March 2020 to 31 May 2020 of the terms relating to liquidation, control, assessment and collection activities, and an extension is also activated 85 days for the statute of limitations and forfeiture. Essentially, in the example given above, the forfeiture would be postponed from 31 December 2021 to 26 March 2022.

A panacea for late offices, and an additional cleaver for the taxpayer, who he suddenly went from a sigh of relief for a deadline he thought had expired, to desperation for having been pinched precisely in the last useful days before the forfeiture. But this situation seems destined to change and return to the origin. In fact, with the CGT 1st Latina 25 October 2023 n. 974, the Court of Justice of the first degree Latina has established that on the subject of assessment, the 85-day extension linked to Covid-19 it does not produce a cascade effect on subsequent years.

In the present case, a notice of assessment for 2016 was notified by the Revenue Agency on 23 March 2023, just before the forfeiture, considering the extension, but still in time. However, the Court points out that the aforementioned art. 67 of Legislative Decree 18/2020, in paragraph 4 a reference is made to art. 12, paragraph 1 of Legislative Decree 159/2015, which provides that the suspension can only operate with reference to the year in which the exceptional event occurred and not cascading over subsequent years. And this principle must be applied not only to the specific case of Covid-19, but in relation to any exceptional event that could lead to the suspension of payment terms.

The combined reading of the rules therefore suggests making exclusive reference to the statute of limitations and forfeiture periods which expire by 31 December of the year in which the suspension of tax obligations and payments for exceptional events is ordered, i.e. 2020. They are only those terms that may be extended by 85 days, not those that expire in subsequent years. A generalized and wide-ranging extension of the assessment deadlines – concludes the sentence – would be unjustified and unmotivated, resulting in a clear violation of the scope of application of the emergency provisions of the Covid-19 legislation due to the rationale that inspired them, i.e., on the one hand, not to burden taxpayers in the period affected by the exceptional event and on the other, not to hinder the activity of the financial offices, which are equally limited in the same period.

Taxpayers, therefore, and especially doctors, must be told to keep an eye on the dates, claiming – as happened before Covid – that the act has become statute-barred if the notification of the assessment occurs after 31 December of the year of expiration.