On 15 October the National Union of Chambers of Tax Lawyers (UNCAT) was received by the director of the MEF Fiorenzo Sirianni.
The meeting
On 15 October, the meeting was held at the Mef between the UNCAT delegates and the Director of Tax Justice Fiorenzo Sirianni. The discussion between Uncat and the Tax Justice Directorate of the Ministry of the Economy was extensive, and concerned new digitalisation initiatives and projects.
The Union has delivered a detailed document analyzing the current functioning of the Tax Justice Database, which collects the observations also received from the local Tax Chambers, which in recent months have “tested” the effectiveness of jurisprudential research.
Statements by the UNCAT President
“The Tax Justice Database is certainly a useful tool and we appreciate the invitation of the Director of Tax Justice, Fiorenzo Sirianni, to highlight the areas for improvement and his willingness to listen, demonstrated in today’s meeting. We believe that the direct and continuous involvement of operators in these important projects is not only in line with the same indications contained in the AI Act but is an indispensable channel to ensure full fairness, trust and reliability”explained the Uncat president Gianni Di Matteo, received on 15 October together with the delegation composed of the secretary councilor Silvia Siccardi and the treasurer councilor Raffaella D’Anna, as well as the councilors Paola Pregliasco, Michele Tiengo, Ida Pansini.
The observations
They fall into three categories:
- effectiveness of interaction with user
- search criteria
- reliability of the answers.
With regard to the first, UNCAT found an improvable user experience, since the sentences are, at the moment, reported in full without either abstracts or maximizations, specifying that, at the same time, in the event of an evolution in this sense, it will be necessary to share the technological choices and algorithmic.
Regarding usability, the system does not indicate the progressive reading of the sentences, with the risk of having to re-read the same text again; therefore, it was highlighted that it would be useful to insert links via direct link with similar and/or referred sentences. Related to this are the observations relating to the search criteria: the obligatory nature of the search criteria, according to a progressive logic, risks “blocking” the search. For example, the “words” field is mandatory if the year of the search is not indicated, however it may not be useful if you search by topic. Conversely, it is not possible to carry out a search by normative extremes and, even attempting the search with logical operators, the result comes out distorted.
Regarding the reliability of the results, the “judgment outcome” search includes conciliations (over 3,500 sentences currently) and amnesties (over 38 thousand sentences), without the possibility of getting an idea of the direction of the judgment in the context of the matter . In cases where there is a lack of appeal, the wording “appeal not present”, according to the same explicit observations, is insufficient, having to specify whether the sentence has become final, particularly in the case of terms that are still current.
The reply of the Director of the MEF
The Dr. Sirianni, with his team, accepted the observations also in view of the announced improvement of the database and illustrated the next steps, from the ministerial decree implementing the electronic tax process, to the improvements currently being defined for the database, guaranteeing the openness to discussions with specialist lawyers:
“We have obtained many important clarifications and we are confident that the common objective of obtaining judicial data of the highest quality is an excellent starting point towards transparent and fair digitalisation”.
