Independence of tax judges: Consulta rejects all appeals

'Absolutely no grounds to really doubt the independence of the judge'. The Constitutional Court (sentence 204 deposited yesterday, pres. Barbera, red. Buscema) has rejected three questions of legitimacy on the status of tax judges proposed by the Venice CGT, the Lombardy CGT (7th section) and the Messina CGT.

The grounds for the remission, which touch on issues that have been open for decades in the debate among practitioners, concerned the infringement of the autonomy and independence, loss of serenity and psychological disturbance of the magistrate due to excessive interference by the Ministry of the Economy in tax justice, as well as compensation, appointment, promotions, the powers of the Presidential Council of Tax Justice, the relative electoral system, disciplinary sanctions and the assignment of collegial functions to honorary judges.

Retracing the history of special tax jurisdiction - from the "municipal and consortial commissions" of the 1864 law to Legislative Decree 825/71, passing through judgments 12 of 1957 and 287 of 1974 on tax "special jurisdiction", up to Legislative Decrees 545 and 546 of 1992, the Court then went into the merits of the grievances: "All the times that this Court has entered into the merits of questions of constitutional legitimacy relating to rules concerning the status of magistrates, it has done so by reason of a direct incidence of those rules with the subject-matter of the judgment a quo".

An effect which 'by its quality, intensity, unambiguousness and evidence of its direction, immediacy and extent of its effects, is such as to determine an effective interference with the conditions of independence and third party status in the decision-making process, irrespective of any profile that may concern a possible "psychological disturbance" of the individual judge'.

The fact that 'the subject matter of the judgments concerns disputes with the Agency over the unified contribution and VAT that have nothing to do with the remuneration, appointment, and promotions of tax judges, the powers of the Cpgt, the electoral system, disciplinary sanctions, and participation in panels by honorary judges' is also striking.