Tax bills, what they are and how they are paid (even in installments)

What are tax bills and how are they paid? This is an act that certainly scares the majority of taxpayers given that it is a demand for payment which could also be followed by executive action.
What not everyone knows, however, is that tax bills, especially if illegitimate, can be defended by appealing against the payment claim.
How and when are they notified? Even though everyone now knows what a tax bill is, not everyone is aware of the ways to dispute it or to find out whether it has been canceled or not.
In any case, these are acts with which the collection agent (in most cases the Revenue-Collection Agency) asks the alleged debtor to pay sums found to be unpaid after a check carried out by the creditor body.
In the guide below we see what the payment methods are for a tax bill with all the useful links, what you risk if you do not pay the requested amount and how to apply for installment payments.
Tax bills, what they are and how to pay them What are tax bills Tax bills: why and when is it notified? What does the payment notice contain Payment of tax bills The debit on the current account How to pay tax bills in compensation Installment When does the installment payment expire? Unpaid tax bills: what is the risk? Can tax bills be contested? When tax bills become statute-barred What are tax bills? The tax bill is nothing more than a payment notice and is an administrative act with which you want to achieve the aim of collecting a debt through the role.
To collect the debt, you turn to a collection agent (as we have said, in most cases it is the Ader) who has the task of notifying the provision with which payment is requested.
If the debt is not paid, then, executive and precautionary actions such as foreclosure, mortgage or administrative arrest may also begin.
The tax bill, contrary to what one might think, is a real executive title and has the same value as a sentence, decree or ordinance.
Precisely due to the fact that it is an executive act, the collection agent can initiate the precautionary and executive measures mentioned above.
What should you do when you receive a tax bill? Once the panic and indignation reaction that one feels upon receiving such a document has been overcome, the first thing to note is that the debt is being disputed and to make sure that one has not actually paid it.
Then, the paths that can be taken, once the validity or otherwise of the bill has been ascertained, are essentially two: the first is to pay the requested amount, possibly by requesting payment in installments.
The second is to appeal to the justice of the peace within 30 days of notification.
Tax bill: why and when is it notified? The notification of the tax bill is one of the fundamental steps in the debt collection process.
The notice, issued by the collection agent, represents a request for payment of pending debts and through the notification the administration makes the interested party aware of the existence of the contents of the document.
This step allows the subject to be able to defend themselves in court, if, for example, it is an illegitimate request.
The notification must take place at the tax domicile of the interested party which usually coincides with the residence.
If the taxpayer elects as his domicile a place other than that of residence or with another person, the notification must be made in this place and if made at the residence it is null and void.
The notification of a tax bill must take place, under penalty of forfeiture, within certain deadlines, by municipal messengers.
The delivery of the deed must be signed by the person receiving it.
What does the payment notice contain? Each notice contains all the information useful to the taxpayer to understand what to do: the description of the sums due; the debtor's identification details; the date on which the role becomes executive; the notice to comply within 60 days of notification; payment methods, including instalments; the methods for requesting the review, suspension or cancellation of the debt by contacting the creditor body or by filing an appeal with the judge.
With a provision dated 17 January 2022, a new model of payment notice was approved for loads entrusted to collection agents starting from 1 January 2022.
Based on the provisions of the 2022 Budget Law, in fact, the notices no longer contain the collection fee, i.e.
the collection costs are no longer charged to the taxpayer.
The sums that are due following the checks carried out by the creditor bodies are registered in the register (this is a list that contains the names of the debtors, the type of credit and the related sums owed).
The role is formed by the creditor body and transmitted to the Revenue-Collection Agency which processes and notifies the payment notice for the purposes of collecting the sums indicated.
read also Payment bills, new model to say goodbye to the collection fee: what changes for citizens Payment of tax bills How should you pay? The methods are different.
First of all, the amount to be paid is that reported in the bulletins contained in the "Notice of sums due".
The amounts to be paid are those indicated in the tax bill and payment can be made in various ways, such as: with the already completed payment slips found inside the tax bill itself (the payment slips can be downloaded directly from the company website 'Revenue Agency-Collection, by accessing your reserved area.); via home banking; at the local offices of the Revenue Collection Agency; the "Pay online" service, available both on the AdeR website and on the EquiClick app, allows you to use the electronic channels of the banks, Poste Italiane and all the other Payment Service Providers (PSPs) participating in the pagoPA node ; The complete list of participating PSPs and information on the activated payment channels can be found on the pagoPA website.
Debiting your current account You can ask your credit institution to pay the installments by debiting your current account.
The request can be forwarded by the account holder at least 20 days before the installment is due.
This means that if the request to the bank is made after the deadline, the direct debit from the current account will be active starting from the next instalment.
Consequently, the payment of the due installment will have to be made in one of the other methods.
read also Tax peace: what it is, how the closure of tax bills works and for whom How to pay tax bills in compensation You can regularize your situation with the tax authorities also through compensation if you have debts due from the Public Administration.
This is the case that occurs when, for example, a company has carried out work on behalf of a public administration but has not yet received payment for the service performed.
The business owner can then use that trade credit to pay the debts subject to payment orders.
The first step is for the PA concerned (i.e.
the one for which the work was carried out) to certify the credit.
To request certification, the IT platform of the Ministry of Economy and Finance – Department of State General Accounting – is available at the address: http://certificazionecrediti.mef.gov.it/CertificazioneCredito/home.xhtml.
All information regarding payment by compensation can be found in this section of the Revenue Agency website.
Installment The installment request can be sent in three ways: via certified e-mail, using the addresses listed in each installment model; by submitting the request at the AdeR office counters; by requesting online via the “Instalment now” service present in the reserved area, valid only for amounts up to 100,000 euros.
If the amount of the debt is greater than 60,000 euros, the temporary situation of objective difficulty must be documented.
The installment plan can reach a maximum of 72 monthly installments.
Only in the event of a purchase and serious financial difficulty can one obtain an extension of up to 120 installments.
Upon request, the installment plan can provide variable installments of increasing amounts for each year.
In the event of a worsening of the temporary situation of objective economic difficulty, the extension can be extended only once, up to 72 months, provided that no forfeiture has occurred.
When does the installment payment expire? The forfeiture of the benefit of installment payments occurs in the event of failure to pay a certain number of instalments, even non-consecutive ones.
In particular: for installments granted after 8 March 2020 and requested until 31 December 2021, the forfeiture occurs upon failure to pay 10 instalments, even non-consecutive ones; for installments presented and granted after 1 January 2022, forfeiture occurs upon failure to pay 5 instalments, even non-consecutive ones.
for installments presented and granted after 16 July 2022, the forfeiture occurs upon failure to pay 8 instalments, even non-consecutive ones.
Once the installment plan has expired: the remaining amount becomes collectible, in full, in a single payment; the load can however be repaid in installments if, at the time of submitting the request, the installments due on the same date are paid in full.
In this case, the new extension plan can be divided into the maximum number of installments not yet due on the same date.
Unpaid tax bills: what you risk For tax bills the deadline for payment is set at 60 days from notification.
In the event of failure to pay the tax bill within the deadline set by the notification, or failure to request an instalment, the Revenue-Collection Agency may initiate against the debtor (and his co-obligors): precautionary and conservative procedures, such as the administrative arrest of registered movable property, or mortgage; forced execution for the coercive recovery of the credit on the basis of the role that constitutes an executive title, therefore the seizure of movable, immovable assets or credits.
Furthermore, in the event of failure to pay the tax bill by the deadline, late payment interest, accrued daily from the date of notification of the same, and any further expenses are due on the sums registered.
read also Tax bills scrapping deadlines 2022: by when you have to pay your tax debts.
Can tax bills be contested? If the taxpayer believes that the tax bill is illegitimate, he can contest it.
The first thing to do, in this case, is to identify the competent judge which varies based on the nature of the debt contained in the tax bill itself and specifically: you turn to the Provincial Tax Commission in whose district the body that issued the tax bill is based.
payment for tax bills requiring tax debts; you turn to the Labor Section Court of the place where the office of the body that issued the request is located for bills that refer to social security and welfare contributions (for self-employed workers the seat of the Court must be identified in the district in which the taxpayer has residence); it is necessary to contact the competent Justice of the Peace of the place where the violation was committed, however, for files concerning administrative sanctions and violations of the highway code.
If the dispute concerns the non-existence of the payment claim, it must be made not against the collection agent, but against the tax authority.
What are the deadlines for challenging a tax bill? It depends on the authority you turn to: for the first instance Tax Court of Justice the deadline is 60 days; for the ordinary labor section court the deadline is 20 days; for the ordinary Court the deadline for formal reasons is 20 days; for the ordinary court for opposition to execution there are no peremptory limits; for the Justice of the Peace the deadline is 30 days.
When tax bills become statute of limitations The statute of limitations for tax bills have never been very clear and the doubt has always been on whether they can be 5 or 10 years.
Not all tax bills have the same statute of limitations, the truth is this, because there is no univocal term.
The statute of limitations for tax bills varies based on the nature of the debt: for debts owed to the Treasury (such as VAT, Ires, Irpef) the statute of limitations is 10 years; for debts owed to local authorities (such as Imu and Tari) the statute of limitations is 5 years; for car tax the statute of limitations is 3 years.
read also The prescription of tax bills in 3, 5 and 10 years