Legal interpretation of tax law: Italy

A few definitional concepts are required at the outset about interpretation in the Italian tax system to clearly define the scope of this chapter. The first remark is that the Italian legal culture is permeated by legal positivism, i.e., the idea that the legal system is a complete and consistent set of rules that are posited and organized in a hierarchical structure. As a result, deference is afforded to the ‘letter of law’, particularly that of general statutory norms, with scant attention to case law (this is also due to the fact that Italy is not a common law system).