Cassazione rejects gaming company’s tax appeal over 2006 entertainment duty

Italy's Court of Cassation ruled on 13 October 2026 that an appeal by a gaming company over entertainment duty for 2006 was inadmissible, according to an ordinance issued that day. The court found that the company had not identified in its appeal the date on which a payment notice had been served, and that it could not remedy that omission by producing the notice's service report only with its closing brief.

The dispute concerned recovery of the imposta sugli intrattenimenti for 2006 and involved the Agenzia delle Dogane e dei Monopoli. The payment notice at issue included sanctions, interest and collection fees. The company challenged the notice before the Commissione tributaria provinciale di Messina, which rejected the appeal; the Commissione tributaria regionale della Sicilia upheld that decision, finding it could not verify whether the challenge had been filed on time.

The regional court found the company had not supplied documents showing the date of service of the payment notice, an element needed to establish compliance with the 60-day term under article 21 of legislative decree no. 546 of 1992. Before the Cassation, the company argued that the appeal court should have examined documents filed in the first-instance case file, which it said included a copy of the notice with its service report, or should have granted time to produce the document again before declaring the original appeal inadmissible.

The court held that the company had not stated in its appeal what the service report contained or, in particular, what service date appeared in it. The report was reproduced only in the closing brief filed in the Cassation proceedings, which the court said could not cure the original defects of the appeal. It noted that the brief provided for by article 380-bis.1 of the Code of Civil Procedure serves only to illustrate issues already before the court and cannot be used to overcome a ground of inadmissibility.

The court also noted a discrepancy: the service report reproduced in the brief gave the service date as 17 December 2010, while in the merits proceedings the company had said the notice was served on 7 December of the same year. It found there were insufficient elements to establish that the report filed referred to the payment notice at issue in the dispute.

The Cassation also declared inadmissible the second ground, in which the company contested the interpretation of procedural rules on filing the challenged act. The court said the regional court's decision was based not on the mere failure to produce the notice but on the absence of proof of its service date, since the issue was whether the challenge had been brought within the 60 days set by tax law. The court rejected the appeal and ordered the company to pay the costs of the Cassation proceedings, fixed at €2,400 in fees, in addition to costs recorded as payable by the state.