This decision appears in conflict with what was stated by a previous judgment of the Supreme Tax Court itself (decision no. 10578, dated April 30 2010). In that occasion, the Court clarified that a "collective-cumulative" appeal is not acceptable when the appeals are based on same legal reasons but not arisen by the same fact (not arisen from an identical historical fact).

In the case relevant to the recent decision n. 1955/2010, the Supreme Tax Court has, instead, considered acceptable a cumulative-collective appeal based on the sole correspondence of the legal issues.

Moving on to the case, at the end of the second instance of the judgment, the Judges of the Regional Tax Commission agreed with an appeal filed by three professionals against the silence-denial issued for applications for IRAP tax refund, relative to the fiscal years 1998, 1999, 2000.

Therefore, the Tax Authorities have appealed to the Supreme Court.

From the decision of the Supreme Court, it appears that the first reason proposed for the appeal by the Italian Tax Authorities was relevant to "the inadmissibility, in this case, of the cumulative appeal and the subsequent incorrectness of the appealed decision, that refused the reason for the appeal, stating that "the common aspects of the matter at hand are that they are three IRAP cases".

The Supreme Court refused this appeal reason.

Firstly, the Judges of the Supreme Tax Court stated that they do not want to "question the principle, recently affirmed by the Supreme Tax Court decision n. 10578/10, that in the tax litigation procedure an appeal collective (by several parties) and at the same time cumulative (against several documents that can be appealed) is not usually acceptable because it is necessary the community of reasoning in law and in fact".

In this case, the Supreme Tax Court has also pointed out that the refusal of the Tax Authorities against the applications for tax refund proposed by the taxpayers, was founded on issues of law and do not in fact, common to the tax payers, so, "the reference to the necessary correspondence in fact of the issues appears needless in the concrete."

The Judges of the Supreme Tax Court– according to the principle stated in the recent judgment n. 10578/2010 – have, therefore, underlined that when the refusal of Tax Authorities against the applications for tax refund proposed by the taxpayers, are founded solely on issues of law and do not in fact, commons to the taxpayers themselves, the collective-cumulative appeal should be acceptable.

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