PORDENONE – «What do I think of the municipal administration of Pordenone? That he doesn’t have the slightest respect for the citizens and – at least with me – they behaved badly. Not only the political representatives, but also the Municipality managers themselves.” This is said, without fear of contradiction, by a citizen who has practically always lived in Pordenone, Claudio Mecchia who found himself in the middle of a story that – in his opinion – shows the administration’s disinterest in him. And it is not just him who says it, but also the judge of the Court of Justice of First Instance (the former tax commission) who “censored” the administration of the capital in black and white, while agreeing with the Municipality on the merits.
THE IMU NOT PAID
The Secchia family, in addition to having a house in Pordenone he has another in Lignano, a mini apartment, where his wife lived, while her husband lived in Pordenone. A housing situation that if motivated, it allowed you not to pay the IMU in either of the two houses as they were considered first and which was legitimately “tolerated” both by the Municipalities and by the Revenue Agency itself. After a ruling from the Supreme Court, however, which established that a family is entitled to only one deduction, some municipalities immediately stepped forward and sent IMU payment slips trying to recover the previous years too. And so, while the Municipality of Lignano did not send anything, that of Pordenone requested a refund (without interest) of the previous 5 years. Account to pay over 12 thousand euros.
COUNTERORDER
Claudio Mecchia, after trying to understand if it was possible to avoid the previous paymentgiven the high figure and given the fact that many other municipalities had not behaved like Pordenone, as a good citizen he paid his due. Shortly after the payment, here’s the twist: a Constitutional Court ruling established that spouses can live in two separate homes and therefore do not have to pay IMU in neither. At that point Mecchia returned to the Municipality to ask for explanations. «Do you know what I heard in response? If he sues for restitution – one of the managers told me – not only will he lose it, but he will also have to pay the lawyer. It doesn’t do anything better for her.” He tried to talk to some administrator, but nothing could be done. And so, with the lawyer Pierfrancesco Scatà, he undertook the path of appeal for the refund of the money paid with the Tax Court of Justice.
THE SENTENCE
It must also be said that in the meantime that Claudio Mecchia was looking for an extrajudicial way to close the matter with the Municipality, the deadlines for appealing had expired, which the municipal lawyer decided to do anyway. And the lawyer Scatà had an excellent intuition, because if it is true that the Court of Justice did not accept his appeal, but it “censored” the Municipality’s way of acting because “we read in the sentence – not proceeding with the annulment in self-defense entailed the risk of possible objective disparities in treatment with other categories of taxpayers”. Furthermore, the sentence also states that the behavior of the municipal administration is questionable as it “did not make good use of the remedy of self-defense”. Even in the face of these “censures” from the court, the Municipality still did not intend to return the money.
CHILDREN AND STEP-CHILDREN
The fact is that a large portion of citizens who received the same complaint never paid and with the Supreme Court ruling everything was remedied. For Claudio Mecchia, however, having behaved as an honest and correct citizen was in fact a rip-off. “Now – concluded the lawyer – we will evaluate how to proceed, but a bitter taste remains in the mouth due to the Municipality’s ethically incorrect behaviour”. Whoever wants to get to the bottom of it is the interested party: those 12 thousand euros have become a question of principle. And there is no compromise on principles.
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