Car tax prescription 2024: when do the deadlines for not paying start?

Expired car tax, when does the prescription start? After how long is the payment of the "old" tax no longer due? Let's start from the assumption that the car tax is one of the most hated taxes in Italy whose payment is a fixed appointment for every motorist, who every year must go to the Aci or alternatively go online and pay the motorist tax.
Failure to pay the car tax can become a very costly cost for the motorist: the delay in paying the car tax triggers interest as a late payment and the bill can become very high.
However, car and motorbike tax is subject to prescription, as is any other type of credit.
The statute of limitations, however, changes not only based on the effective date, but also based on the type of credit.
If there are payments that expire after 5 or 10 years, in fact, there are payments that also have a shorter limitation period, such as car tax, in fact.
For this reason, a bit of confusion often arises in this regard, especially because the car tax is a payment that occurs on an annual basis, leading some to assimilate it to the rules for periodic credits.
At the same time, the car and motorbike tax is collected like other taxes and duties by the relevant Region.
In fact, the Court of Cassation has also intervened several times on the issue of the statute of limitations for car and motorbike tax, clarifying the rule of the three-year term and the starting method.
Car and motorbike tax prescription 2023 If the car tax has expired but 3 years have passed without there being a payment reminder, the car tax no longer has to be paid because it has become statute of limitations.
This is precisely provided for by law 296/06 which in art.
1, paragraph 163 which establishes the obligation to notify the tax bill for non-payment of stamp duty by 31 December of the third year following the year in which the assessment became definitive.
Therefore, if the motorist who is also a taxpayer does not receive an Equitalia tax bill in the 3 years following the expiry of the car tax, he will no longer be required to pay the expired car tax.
Even the jurisprudence itself has proven to be consistent with this interpretation as it considers the car tax to be a tax credit which therefore expires in 3 years.
The 3-year statute of limitations is a sort of peculiarity of the car tax, which shares this term with very few other credits.
Effective date for the prescription of the car tax The motorist, however, must pay attention in calculating the prescription: the 3 years that allow you to no longer pay the expired car tax start from 1 January following the expiry date of the car tax.
The method with which the starting date of the statute of limitations is calculated is not at all intuitive given that in most cases the starting date itself begins from the day on which payment was expected.
As regards the car tax, however, the reference year of the car and motorbike tax must be taken into consideration and calculated for 3 years, taking into consideration 31 December of the third year.
To give a practical example, the car and motorbike tax due this year will be officially prescribed on 1 January 2028.
This is the general rule to keep in mind to calculate the prescription of the car and motorbike tax, even if there is an exception for regarding the pandemic period.
Legislative decree no.
18 of 2020 suspended the payment of taxes for the period from 8 March 2020 to 31 August 2021.
Consequently, the statute of limitations was also suspended and began to run when the suspension of taxes ended.
To simplify, it must be kept in mind that for the period mentioned, the payment of the stamp duty expires with the ordinary deadline plus a further 541 days.
In this particular case, therefore, the limitation period does not expire on January 1st of the third year, but on June 24th of the fifth year.
However, it should be remembered that the limitation period is interrupted in the event of a payment request being received from the Revenue Agency or Equitalia.
In this case, therefore, the expired tax will have to be paid with an increase as a penalty which will be proportional to the days that have passed since the last day for making the payment.
When the debtor may not pay the car and motorbike tax By knowing the correct statute of limitations for the car and motorbike tax it is easy to understand when the terms that save the debtor from paying are triggered.
Once the prescription has been fulfilled, in fact, the credit can no longer be claimed by the debtor, who can simply oppose the prescription to a possible payment order.
However, it is essential to know that anyone who receives a payment notice for a prescribed car or motorbike tax cannot simply ignore it without paying, but must appeal to the relevant tax commission within 60 days of the notification.
By demonstrating that the statute of limitations has expired, the debtor can then refuse to pay the car and motorbike tax without incurring any consequences.
The same principle also applies when the tax bill arrived late enough to be able to be challenged due to prescription, even if payment was never originally requested.
read also Debt prescription 2023: how long after is it possible not to pay?