IMU ed occupazione abusiva d’immobile: il dado è tratto?

The Constitutional Court recently declared the constitutional illegitimacy of Article 9, paragraph 1, of Legislative Decree No. 23 of 14 March 2011, in the part in which it does not provide that IMU is not due for unlawfully occupied properties for which a timely criminal complaint has been filed. The judgment downsizes, if not completely neutralises, that jurisprudential orientation of merit and legitimacy (prevalent to date) according to which the unauthorised occupation of a property followed by the owner's temporary loss of possession would not affect the IMU requirement. In order to reach these conclusions, the Constitutional Judges rely exclusively on artt. 3 and 53 of the Italian Constitution and open to a retroactive application of the IMU exemption provided by Article 1, paragraph 759, letter g-bis) of the Law of 27 December 2019. In this sense, the possible scenarios opened by the judgment will be analysed both in relation to the existing relationships between taxpayers and tax authorities and to those ‘exhausted’. This analysis will be carried out according to a twofold perspective: first, the recent introduction, in the Statute of Taxpayers' Rights, of compulsory and optional self-defence will be taken into account and the effects that the latter could produce in the case at hand; secondly, considering the centrality recognised by the Court to the criminal denunciation of occupation sine titulo, as a condition to benefit, even retroactively, from the IMU exemption.