Taxes, ballast in the Supreme Court under pressure from new litigation

Tax disputes remain a ballast in the Supreme Court. Almost one out of every two pending appeals (46.1% to be precise) in the civil field concerns tax disputes. On the backlog, the tax section has made a real breakthrough thanks to its organisation. This is certified by the numbers for 2025: the backlog is down 9.1 per cent, which means almost 3,700 fewer files than in the previous year. The problem, however, is that the pressure of new litigation remains very strong. And this is the real stumbling block to overcome, because organisation can push but alone is not enough. If the weight of appeals remains so high, more effective deflationary policies are needed.

But let us go in order. Let us consider the new dossiers entering the gates of Piazza Cavour in Rome, according to the latest data released by the Supreme Court's statistics office. In the whole of civil law, 26,345 appeals were filed in 2025. Taxes (9,154) absorbed almost 35 per cent of them. In essence, with the sole exception of 2023 (the year affected by the amnesties), the annual flow of tax disputes brought before the courts of legitimacy has never fallen below 9,000. This means that the pressure on the judges of third instance has not in fact been reduced. The organisation, effort and settlement capacity may increase with the bar set even higher, but the inflow cannot be reduced. From the point of view of protecting the reasons of both the Treasury and the taxpayer, this certainly responds to the full recognition of the rights of both parties in the 'case'.

But perhaps we should try to understand why the conflict knows no respite or pause. Inside the numbers released by the statistics office of the Supreme Court there are interesting trends that should be read carefully. Starting with the primacy of the subjects that create the greatest litigiousness. Signs that had already emerged in the first and second degree tax courts are confirmed in the third degree (see 'Il Sole 24 Ore' of 11 January). Local taxes, in fact, lead the ranking of new entries: 1,680 appeals registered in 2025, equal to 6.4% of the total, thus surpassing even Irpef (55.4%) and VAT (4.8%). But if disputes on collection are also added, the percentage becomes even 9.1 per cent: almost one new appeal in ten. In essence, litigation, especially on Imu and Tari, is unloading in the Court of Cassation. On the one hand, it is the product of a greater push for recoveries initiated in past years by local authorities to make up the tax gap between paid and potentially due on these two fronts. On the other hand, it is very likely that even disputes for amounts that are not large will still go all the way to the last instance.

And this impression can also be gleaned from the value of pending litigation in the Supreme Court. The latest publicly available figure (contained in the annual report of the Department of Tax Justice) sets the clock back to the end of 2024. The economic value of the appeals still to be decided totalled a good 25.7 billion euros, i.e. an amount higher than the Budget Law 2026 (about 22.4 billion, as recalled a few days ago by the Department for the Government Programme) just to make one understand the orders of magnitude in the field. Within that 25.7 billion, 89.6 per cent concerns disputes involving the Inland Revenue Agency, i.e. treasury taxes (both direct and indirect). While litigation with territorial authorities is worth 'only' 2% of the total amount, i.e. just over half a billion euro.

If one goes to cassation for both high stakes and smaller amounts there seems to be no way out. Yet somewhere one can start in order to prevent the litigation from remaining at such high levels and then, inevitably, with the passage of time, moving on to the third instance. For example, the directive 2026-2028 signed on Thursday by Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti devotes great attention to the issue of the management of tax disputes, indicating as a 'priority' objective that of improving the sustainability of tax claims in court and reducing conflict with taxpayers. In this sense, the Mef's guidelines ensure that actions will be taken to "optimise the quality of notified acts" and to "promote a systematic assessment of the sustainability of the tax claim in both the pre-litigation and litigation phases". Added to this is the call for an 'effective use' of the 'deflective and defining instruments of litigation', including compulsory or optional self-defence.