Studio PonchioSTP
Assessments using the «Radar» system: benchmarking and the taxpayer’s safeguards
Benchmarking tools and the cross-matching of databases are strengthening the tax authorities’ hand. The taxpayer’s safeguards nevertheless remain intact: a reasoned assessment, evidence, and the right to be heard.
Advances in risk analysis tools allow the tax administration to compare an individual taxpayer’s data with that of comparable taxpayers and with the information held in the tax databases. This is an aid to selecting whom to audit, not evidence in itself.
Evidential weight
The results of automated cross-matching are, as a rule, circumstantial evidence that must be turned into a reasoned assessment backed by corroborating findings. Statistical deviations and sector averages cannot, on their own, sustain a tax claim without an analysis of the actual position.
The safeguards
What remains central is the contraddittorio preventivo (the right to be heard before the assessment is issued), the duty to give reasons and the right of access to the material relied on. A defence is built early: by documenting what makes your business distinctive and by demanding an account of the data on which the comparison rests.
- Statuto dei diritti del contribuente (Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights) – l. 212/2000, art. 6-bis (right to be heard) and art. 7 (duty to give reasons).
- D.P.R. 600/1973 – assessment of income taxes.