Tremonti Romagnoli Piccardi e Associati defended Banca Intesa in tax litigation proceedings concerning the payment of stamp duty on the daily journal. According to the Revenue Agency, the fact that the bank keeps the daily journal in a “summarised” format (that is, recording as one transaction all the individual transactions of the same type carried out in one day) would be sufficient to reach a satisfactory level of analysis, only when combined with the “elementary” accounting records kept by the Bank on their IT system, all such transactions being recorded individually via said system. That being said, the “elementary” accounting records, since they constitute an integral part of the daily journal, must also be subject to stamp duty. The Supreme Court, Tax Chamber, in its ruling no. 735, handed down on 13th January 2017, rejected the argument of the tax office, and upheld the complete annulment of notices served on the bank, as previously ordered by the Judges at first and second instance.

The Judges held that the obligation to keep the daily journal on an analytical basis is met even if the Bank records performed transactions “by type”, with the sole condition of being recorded day by day. The daily journal is in this way correctly maintained, and therefore does not need to be integrated with the “elementary records”, and with regard to the latter, as such, the bank legitimately did not pay the stamp duty. Acting from the Firm were partner Cristiano Caumont Caimi and associate Anna Maria Gulino. On the matter at hand, which is a topic relevant to the banking system, the Supreme Court had already expressed itself in similar terms during the course of 2016 (Supreme Civil Court, Tax Chamber, 1st April 2016, no. 6356) in favour of Unicredit, which during the case, was also defended by Tremonti Romagnoli Piccardi e Associati.