Accertamento con adesione (settlement of a tax assessment by agreement) and conciliazione (judicial tax settlement) do not fix the evaded tax for criminal purposes: the court redetermines it on its own and departs from the agreed amount only on the basis of concrete factual elements. Legal framework, thresholds under Article 4, mitigating circumstance under Article 13-bis and steps to take where payment is by instalments.
Accertamento con adesione and the conciliazione agreement (Article 48 of Legislative Decree No. 546/1992) do not fix the evaded tax for criminal purposes. Article 20(1-bis) of Legislative Decree No. 74/2000 allows the instruments of final assessment to be admitted into the criminal proceedings “also following adesione”, provided they “concern violations arising from the same facts for which criminal proceedings have been brought”, and only “for the purpose of proving the fact established therein”. The wording, however, names adesione, not the conciliazione agreement: that the conclusion applies a fortiori to conciliazione as well is this Firm’s reading. The criminal court therefore reconstructs the evaded tax on its own; to place it above the threshold, where the administrative settlement has brought it below, different reasoning is not enough: concrete factual elements are required that make the original quantification more reliable.
Paragraph 1-bis was inserted by Article 1(1) of Legislative Decree No. 87/2024, in force since 29 June 2024. It follows from the wording that admission does not amount to a binding effect: the instrument enters as evidence “of the fact established therein”, to be assessed under Article 192 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, not as a binding assessment. The text does not grade its evidential weight: the point awaits its application in practice. Article 21-bis operates in the opposite direction and is more incisive: only an irrevocable acquittal at trial because the fact does not exist or the defendant did not commit it is binding in the tax proceedings as to the material facts.
To this effect, Corte di cassazione (Italian Supreme Court), Third Criminal Division, judgment No. 526/2025 (hearing of 19 November 2024, filed on 8 January 2025), concerning a charge under Article 5: adesione, since it presupposes knowledge of the tax office’s initiative, does not satisfy the ground of non-punishability under Article 13(2); full payment of the redetermined amount due counts as a mitigating circumstance under Article 13-bis; the court determines the evaded tax and may depart from the agreed amount only under the conditions set out at the outset. The judgment set aside the conviction handed down by the lower courts.
Period of application: the cited articles of Legislative Decree No. 74/2000 apply in their current text until 31 December 2026; from 1 January 2027 the decree is repealed by Article 101(1)(z) of the consolidated act on tax penalties (Legislative Decree No. 173 of 5 November 2024), with the exception of Articles 21-bis and 21-ter, which remain in force. The 1 January 2027 effective date derives from Article 102(1) of the consolidated act, as amended by Article 4(1) of Decree-Law No. 200 of 31 December 2025, converted with amendments by Law No. 26 of 27 February 2026.
The recurring risk is a downward adesione that is not reasoned on the facts: an IRES (Italian corporate income tax) assessment of EUR 140,000 settled at EUR 92,000 falls below the threshold under Article 4, but if the instrument does not indicate which findings were dropped and why, the determination of the amount remains with the court. The thresholds under letters (a) and (b) must both be exceeded; the evaded tax is measured “with reference to any one of the individual taxes” and on the individual annual return; IRAP (Italian regional tax on productive activities) remains outside, because paragraph 1 punishes whoever acts “for the purpose of evading income taxes or value added tax”.
On the reward side, Article 13(2), for Articles 2, 3, 4 and 5, requires ravvedimento operoso (voluntary correction) or the filing of the omitted return by the deadline for the return for the following period, and in any event before formal knowledge of accesses, inspections, audits or of the commencement of any administrative assessment activity or criminal proceedings: adesione and conciliazione do not fall within it. The mitigating circumstance under Article 13-bis(1) remains available.
Who acts and when: whoever conducts the adesione, together with the criminal defence lawyer, before signing. For the mitigating circumstance under Article 13-bis(1), full discharge of the debt must occur before the close of the first-instance trial. If on that date the debt is being discharged by instalments, including following conciliazione and adesione procedures, the defendant notifies the court seized of the case, attaching the relevant documentation, and at the same time informs the Agenzia delle entrate (Italian Revenue Agency) accordingly (paragraph 1, second sentence). The proceedings are stayed from receipt of the notice; after one year the stay is lifted, unless the Agenzia notifies that payment of the instalments is regularly in progress: in that case the proceedings remain stayed for a further three months, extendable by the court once only for no more than three months, with the limitation period suspended (paragraph 1-bis). The stay is also lifted earlier if the Agenzia certifies full payment or notifies forfeiture of the instalment plan: what closes the window is forfeiture, which under Article 8(4) of Legislative Decree No. 218/1997 and Article 15-ter of Presidential Decree No. 602/1973 is triggered if an instalment other than the first is not paid by the due date of the following one, save for minor default. The three-month period under Article 13(3) does not concern this case.
Documents to be drawn up and kept: the accertamento con adesione instrument or conciliazione agreement, reasoned finding by finding; a schedule of the residual evaded tax by individual tax and period, showing the distance from the thresholds; F24 (Italian tax payment form) receipts for the instalments; evidence of the costs recognised; the Agenzia’s certifications of payments.
No. The administrative settlement may be admitted into the criminal proceedings as evidence of the fact established (Article 20(1-bis)), but it does not bind the court, which determines the evaded tax independently and may exceed the threshold only by indicating concrete factual elements that make the original quantification more reliable.
No. For Articles 4 and 5, Article 13(2) requires ravvedimento operoso or the filing of the omitted return by the deadline for the return for the following period, and in any event before formal knowledge of accesses, inspections, audits or of the commencement of any administrative assessment activity or criminal proceedings. Subsequent payment operates as a mitigating circumstance under Article 13-bis(1) if it occurs before the close of the first-instance trial.
Not always. Access to that procedure is governed by Article 13-bis(2), with stricter requirements than those for the mitigating circumstance: discharge of the debt before the declaration opening the first-instance trial, “as well as where ravvedimento operoso has taken place”, without prejudice to the cases under Article 13(1) and (2). The prevailing reading takes the “as well as” (nonché) in a cumulative sense. Whoever pays after the opening of the trial retains the mitigating circumstance, but not the procedure.
Only in part. Article 21-bis gives res judicata effect in the tax proceedings solely to the irrevocable judgment of acquittal because the fact does not exist or the defendant did not commit it, delivered after trial, and solely as to the material facts. Paragraph 3 extends the effect, limited to the formula “the fact does not exist”, to the natural person in whose interest the employee or representative acted, to the entity in whose interest the representative or the director, including a de facto director, acted, and to their shareholders or members. Article 21-bis, together with Article 21-ter, is excluded from the repeal of 1 January 2027.
As a rule, yes. Article 12-bis(2) excludes seizure where the debt is being discharged by instalments, including following conciliazione or accertamento con adesione procedures, provided the taxpayer is up to date with payments; this is without prejudice to the concrete risk of dissipation of the assets securing the debt, inferable from the offender’s income, assets or financial position and assessed with regard to the seriousness of the offence.
Valuation matters must be kept separate: for the purposes of Article 4(1), no account is taken of incorrect classification, of the valuation of positive or negative items that actually exist where the criteria applied are disclosed in the financial statements or in other documentation relevant for tax purposes, of breaches of the accrual rules, of the lack of relevance to the business activity and of the non-deductibility of real negative items (paragraph 1-bis). Outside those cases, valuations which, taken as a whole, differ by less than 10 per cent from the correct ones do not give rise to punishable facts, and the amounts within that percentage are not taken into account when checking the thresholds (paragraph 1-ter).
Legislative Decree No. 74 of 10 March 2000, Articles 1, 4, 5, 12-bis, 13, 13-bis, 20 and 21-bis (text in force on 5 September 2026)
Legislative Decree No. 87 of 14 June 2024 (Official Gazette No. 150 of 28 June 2024)
Legislative Decree No. 218 of 19 June 1997, Articles 6 and 8; Presidential Decree No. 602 of 29 September 1973, Article 15-ter
Legislative Decree No. 546 of 31 December 1992, Articles 48, 48-bis, 48-bis.1 and 48-ter
Legislative Decree No. 173 of 5 November 2024, Articles 101 and 102; Decree-Law No. 200 of 31 December 2025, Article 4, converted with amendments by Law No. 26 of 27 February 2026
Corte di cassazione, Third Criminal Division, judgment No. 526/2025, hearing of 19 November 2024, filed on 8 January 2025 (ECLI:IT:CASS:2025:526PEN)
However, the administrative settlement remains an item of evidence that the criminal court must assess: whoever enters into adesione or conciliazione would do well to insist on an instrument reasoned finding by finding, because it is that reasoning, and not the final amount, that carries weight when the criminal proceedings continue.