Tax Law – VAT Refund – Legitimation of the transferee to file a refund claim – Impossibility of recovering the tax due to the transferor’s insolvency. Second Instance Tax Court of Lombardy, Section 25, Judgment No. 2273/2024.

By judgment no. 2273 filed on August 20, 2024, the Second Instance Tax Court of Lombardy ruled in the referral judgment regarding the assessment of the impossibility or excessive difficulty for the taxpayer company to recover the unduly paid VAT from its supplier, which legitimizes the transferee to request a refund to the Tax Authority. The Court considered the impossibility of recovering the VAT from the supplier to be proven, based on the fact that the transferor, being insolvent, had initiated composition with creditors proceedings (concordato preventivo) before the conditions for requesting a VAT refund had arisen (thus excluding the possibility for the transferee to take legal action), and on the limitation imposed on the satisfaction of unsecured creditors to 8% of their claim (https://www.mattarelli.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/sentenza-2273-2024-CGTII-Lombardia-2.pdf ).