Observatory › Contenzioso e riscossione › Parallel books: when informal records become evidence

Parallel books: when informal records become evidence

Day books, diaries and files found on the premises can support an adjustment of revenue: a blanket denial is not a defence.

Records kept outside the official books and found on the business premises amount to a serious, precise and consistent presumption: denying their relevance in general terms is not a defence.

The evidential weight of informal day books

On the settled case law of the Corte di Cassazione, notes, diaries and informal files recording data that never reached the official registers justify an analytical-inductive assessment of revenue under art. 39 of DPR 600/1973. It falls to the taxpayer to produce specific evidence to the contrary, document by document.

Organisational precautions

There is an organisational side to this too: internal management notes should be kept separate from tax data and filed methodically, because during an audit every jotting can be read as undeclared revenue. The firm helps businesses set up their document flows properly and defends them when they are heard by the tax office.

• Adjustment assessments – art. 39 of DPR 600/1973.
• Simple presumptions – art. 2729 of the Italian civil code.