THE NEW RESPONSIBILITIES OF TAX PROFESSIONALS: FROM NEUTRAL INTERMEDIARY TO CONDITIONAL GATEKEEPER WITH A GUARANTEE FUNCTION

Abstract

Tax document marked for review on a laptop

This article examines the evolving liability of tax professionals in Italian law after the Court of Cassation’s March 2026 rulings. It argues that these decisions do not impose a general duty to guarantee the legality of taxpayers’ conduct, but selectively extend liability through the rules on complicity in administrative tax offences. The analysis traces the erosion of the traditional neutrality of external professionals and shows how Italian case law has developed a model based on conscious causal contribution, including by omission, and qualified diligence, regardless of personal economic gain. The paper adopts a doctrinal and interpretative approach, complemented by a limited functional comparison. Comparative references to anti-money laundering, DAC6, failure-to-prevent models, and SLAPP-related professional misconduct are used not as doctrinal equivalents, but to test a shared boundary problem: when professional assistance becomes participation in abuse. Table of Contents:

1. Introduction  

2. The Traditional Role of the External Professional

3. The Italian Experience

3.1. The historical and legal evolution: from absolute neutrality to joint liability

3.2. Recent Developments in Case Law 

4. Participatory Liability and Convergence with Criminal Law Models

5. Implications for Professional Integrity: An International Perspective

6. Concluding Remarks 1. Introduction

In recent years, the role of tax professionals has been the subject of growing attention both in national case law and in the international debate on tax governance and market integrity. This development is part of a broader discussion on the role of intermediaries in aggressive tax planning and compliance dynamics.

This paper aims to argue that recent Italian case law does not establish a generalized liability of the professional for the legality of the taxpayer’s conduct, but rather achieves a selective expansion of liability through the use of participatory frameworks, in particular through a renewed application of the doctrine of joint liability in administrative tax offences.

Far from being an isolated phenomenon, this shift appears consistent with a global trend toward redefining the role of professionals as “gatekeepers” of the tax system. From this perspective, the Italian experience offers an interesting case study of “internal” jurisprudential evolution that produces effects functionally analogous to explicit regulatory models developed in other legal systems.

From a methodological standpoint, this article adopts a doctrinal and interpretative approach, complemented by a strictly functional comparative overlay. The analysis is grounded primarily in the exegesis of Italian statutory and case law sources, with particular emphasis on the decisions of the Court of Cassation delivered in March 2026. Comparative materials are not used to claim doctrinal equivalence among legal systems. They are used more narrowly to test whether different legal orders are responding to a common structural problem: the role of technically specialized professionals who, while formally acting within ordinary advisory or representative functions, may contribute to the production, concealment, or normalization of unlawful economic conduct.

The comparison is therefore functional rather than classificatory. It does not ask whether Italian administrative tax complicity, English professional discipline, anti-money laundering duties, DAC6 reporting obligations, and SLAPP-related professional misconduct share the same legal source, sanctioning structure, or doctrinal elements. They plainly do not. It asks whether these fields display a comparable movement away from an absolute conception of professional neutrality and toward a conditional model of accountability, triggered where the professional’s conduct, knowledge, informational position, or failure to act materially assists the client’s wrongful strategy.

Within that limited framework, the references to SLAPPs and abusive legal representation serve a precise methodological function. They are not introduced as direct analogues of tax violations, nor as evidence that tax professionals and litigation lawyers are subject to identical duties. They are used as a boundary-testing comparator. SLAPPs expose with particular clarity the same structural difficulty that appears in aggressive tax planning and tax non-compliance: the law must distinguish between legitimate professional assistance and the use of professional expertise as an instrument for evasion, intimidation, concealment, or abuse. The comparison is therefore not substantive identity, but functional resemblance.

The inquiry is therefore of a legal-dogmatic nature, rather than empirical. It does not seek to provide a systematic account of the criminal liability of professionals – an area governed by an autonomous body of rules and already extensively addressed in the literature – but instead focuses on administrative tax liability and its intersections with the categories of criminal law.

The geographical scope of the analysis is primarily confined to the Italian legal system. Functional parallels are drawn with selected foreign jurisdictions and supranational regimes only where they illuminate the legal position of professional intermediaries as conditional gatekeepers. The article, therefore, makes no claim to exhaustive comparative coverage. Nor does it argue that SLAPP litigation, anti-money laundering duties, DAC6 reporting rules, and administrative tax complicity are doctrinally interchangeable. Their relevance lies in the narrower point that each field confronts a recurring problem of professional intermediation: when does technically lawful professional conduct lose its claim to neutrality because it knowingly or negligently facilitates a legally abusive outcome?

The structure of the article follows from this methodological choice. Sections 2 and 3 reconstruct the traditional neutrality paradigm and its erosion in Italian law. Section 4 analyzes the March 2026 rulings as the doctrinal center of the article. Section 5 then explains why the Italian model is best understood through the categories of participatory liability, including causal contribution, omission, and qualified professional diligence. Only after that doctrinal reconstruction does the article turn to comparative materials. The UK and SLAPP-related discussion is therefore not part of the core Italian holding; it is used to test the broader boundary between legitimate professional assistance and professional enablement of abuse. Section 6 situates that boundary problem within international gatekeeper theory, DAC6, anti-money laundering obligations, and failure-to-prevent models.

2. The Traditional Role of the External Professional

The traditional view of the tax professional’s role was based on a clear separation between the taxpayer and the intermediary. The former was the party to the tax relationship and the recipient of penalties; the latter acted as an external party, bearing no direct liability except in exceptional cases. The role of the professional adviser, whether legal or tax, has traditionally been situated within the legal system as a figure possessing technical expertise at the service of the client, with an advisory function which, for a long time, was characterised by substantial neutrality about the client’s choices and any unlawful conduct on their part. This approach, however, has undergone a significant evolution over time, driven by the emergence of complex economic and financial phenomena and the growing prominence of so-called organised economic crime, in which the professional’s contribution often plays not merely an ancillary but a structural role.

From a historical perspective, the original model, which became established between the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, was based on a strictly liberal conception of criminal law, in which liability was anchored exclusively to the conduct of the principal perpetrator of the offence. The professional was regarded as a mere technical assistant, with no obligation to monitor or intervene in the client’s decisions, and protected by professional secrecy as a safeguard of the right to a defence and private autonomy. In this context, their criminal liability.[1] could only be established in the event of direct and conscious participation in the commission of the offence.[2]

From the 1970s onwards, this paradigm began to reveal its limitations. The rise in corporate, tax, and financial crimes has highlighted how many unlawful acts cannot be carried out without the expert input of professionals capable of devising complex legal structures, which are often formally lawful but essentially designed to circumvent or breach the law. In this context, Anglo-Saxon legal scholarship has developed critical reflections on the concept of neutrality, highlighting phenomena such as the “deliberate ignorance” of the adviser and the risk of consultancy being used as a tool for engineering illegality.[3]

An intermediate model has thus gradually emerged, now prevalent in contemporary legal systems, in which the professional’s neutrality is no longer presumed in absolute terms, but becomes a functional quality, subject to compliance with certain limits. In other words, the professional can be considered neutral only to the extent that their involvement remains within the bounds of genuine technical consultancy, devoid of any intention to facilitate the commission of an offence.[4]

From a legal perspective, this development is essentially reflected in the rules governing joint criminal liability. Generally speaking, in both civil law and common law systems, the mere act of providing advice is not in itself sufficient to establish criminal liability. For a professional to be held liable for a client’s offence, two fundamental elements must be present: firstly, a causal contribution, even if merely facilitating, to the commission of the offence; on the other hand, a qualified subjective element, consisting of the awareness and intention to contribute to the unlawful conduct.[5]

The basis for the professional’s neutrality lies, first and foremost, in the absence of a general legal obligation to prevent the commission of a crime by others: the consultant, in fact, does not, as a rule, hold a position of responsibility towards the client. Added to this is the importance of professional secrecy, which limits the possibility of disclosing information acquired in the course of professional practice, as well as the social function of consultancy, which is closely linked to the protection of the right to a defence and the freedom of economic initiative.[6]

However, these factors do not preclude the professional’s liability where their involvement goes beyond the scope of mere consultancy to assume an active role in the commission of the offence.[7] From this perspective, case law has identified various forms of complicity. Material complicity occurs when the professional participates directly in the commission of the offence, for example, by preparing false documentation or setting up fictitious corporate structures. Moral complicity, on the other hand, occurs when the professional reinforces or determines another person’s criminal intent by providing operational guidance or decisive suggestions for the implementation of the unlawful plan.[8]

Particularly problematic is the so-called grey area, represented by cases of ambiguous or “borderline” advice, in which the professional formally limits themselves to setting out legal options, some of which may be used for unlawful purposes.[9] In such cases, the distinction between lawfulness and criminal liability is identified primarily in terms of the subjective element: criminal liability requires that the adviser be aware of the unlawful use of their advice and accept, even if only in terms of reckless intent, the risk of the offence being committed.[10]

The comparative analysis also highlights a substantial underlying convergence between the various legal systems, albeit with some significant differences. In the Italian system, case law tends to emphasise the distinction between neutral advice and active involvement, requiring a concrete and informed contribution to establish the professional’s liability. In the United States, the issue is addressed through the categories of “aiding and abetting” and “conspiracy,” with particular attention to the concepts of “willful blindness” and “recklessness,” which allow liability to be extended even to situations of deliberate ignorance.[11] In the United Kingdom, by contrast, a more rigorous approach is evident, as demonstrated by the introduction of offences that also penalise the failure to prevent tax offences by individuals operating in a professional or corporate capacity.[12]

At the supranational level too, case law has sought to balance the need to effectively combat economic crimes with the protection of fundamental rights, in particular the relationship of trust between lawyer and client. According to the interpretation provided, whilst this relationship is protected, it cannot be invoked to cover activities that are knowingly part of a criminal scheme.[13]

The role of the professional as a neutral party must therefore now be understood in relative and dynamic terms. Neutrality can no longer be regarded as an automatically recognised status, but rather as a condition that must be assessed on a case-by-case basis, in light of the specific nature of the service provided, the context in which it is performed, and, above all, the psychological attitude of the adviser.[14] The evolution of economic criminal law has thus transformed neutrality from an implicit prerequisite into a problematic element, requiring a constant balancing act between the need to protect the economic order and the safeguarding of the profession’s essential functions.[15]

3. The Italian experience

In order to facilitate a proper understanding of the analysis that follows, it is necessary to outline certain institutional features of the Italian legal system that may not be immediately familiar to an international readership. The Italian tax penalty system is structured along a dual-track model. On the one hand, administrative tax penalties – primarily pecuniary in nature – are imposed by the tax authorities, irrespective of whether criminal proceedings are initiated. On the other hand, criminal sanctions are reserved for more serious violations exceeding specified quantitative thresholds and fall within the jurisdiction of the judicial authorities. The two tracks are formally autonomous: the same conduct may give rise to both administrative penalties and criminal liability, each governed by distinct rules in terms of attribution criteria, evidentiary standards, and limitation periods. The key provision governing participation in administrative tax offences is Article 9 of Legislative Decree No. 472 of 18 December 1997, which provides that, where multiple parties contribute to the same violation, each shall be subject to the corresponding penalty. This rule operates in parallel with Article 110 of the Criminal Code, which establishes a unitary framework for participation in criminal offences. A further layer of complexity is introduced by Article 7 of Decree-Law No. 269 of 30 September 2003, as converted by Law No. 326 of 24 November 2003, which, by way of derogation from the principle of personal liability, attributes administrative tax penalties to legal persons, thereby excluding the individual liability of natural persons acting in the interest of the entity. It is within this systematic framework that the Tax Division of the Court of Cassation has progressively developed the model of liability of tax professionals examined in the following pages.

In the Italian context, the issue of a professional adviser’s liability for involvement in a client’s unlawful conduct represents one of the most complex issues in contemporary law, creating a tension between two fundamental principles: on the one hand, professional autonomy and independence, which safeguard the right to a defence and the freedom of economic initiative; on the other, personal liability for conduct which, whilst formally attributable to the exercise of a professional activity, crosses the boundaries of lawfulness.

In terms of positive law, the Italian legal system recognises that legal and tax professionals occupy a position of functional neutrality, rooted in the very nature of their intellectual services. The law governing the legal profession, for example, grants lawyers full autonomy and independence in the practice of their profession, whilst at the same time requiring them to observe professional secrecy regarding information obtained both in court proceedings and in the provision of out-of-court advisory services. Similar safeguards are found in the ethical rules governing the professions of chartered accountant and tax adviser.[16] This regulatory framework establishes a principle of neutrality in professional acts: a professional providing intellectual services cannot automatically be held liable for unlawful acts committed by a client through the use of the advice received. However, as will be seen, such neutrality is neither absolute nor static: rather, it represents the starting point of a judicial evolution that has progressively redefined the boundaries of professional liability across both strands of the sanctions system.

3.1. The historical and legal evolution: from absolute neutrality to joint liability

The evolution of Italian case law regarding the liability of tax professionals represents a process of progressive redefinition of the role of the tax adviser, who has transformed from a mere neutral technical intermediary into a party subject to specific control obligations. This process, which has unfolded over more than two decades, reflects a profound shift in the conception of tax consultancy: from a purely executive activity to one characterised by substantive supervisory duties and a liability that is independent of the pursuit of direct personal gain.

Initially, case law tended to treat tax professionals as essentially neutral, characterising them as mere technical intermediaries with no obligation to carry out substantive checks on tax returns submitted electronically. This approach was based on a restrictive interpretation of the rules governing complicity in tax offences: the general rule governing this matter provides that, where several parties are complicit in an offence, each is liable to the extent of their own contribution, with the possibility of a reduction or exemption from the penalty in the presence of mitigating circumstances. According to the initial approach, however, for this framework to apply to the professional, proof was required of a personal interest or a specific economic advantage deriving from the offence, in addition to the normal professional fee. In cases where the professional had been limited to the electronic transmission of tax returns already completed by the client without having drafted them, the Tax Commissions therefore tended to exclude joint liability.[17]

Since the 2010s, the Court of Cassation has adopted a stricter approach regarding the civil liability of professionals towards their clients. The Italian Civil Code imposes on professionals a standard of care commensurate with the technical nature of the work carried out, which is higher than that required of an ordinary debtor. Case law has progressively established that this standard entails not only the correct performance of the requested services, but also the obligation not to include in tax returns costs that are undocumented or irrelevant, and to report to the client any inconsistencies in the data provided.[18] At the same time, the Court has clarified the limits of the client’s duty to supervise the professional’s work: a person who engages an expert precisely because they lack the necessary technical expertise cannot be held at fault for failing to supervise the performance of the delegated tax obligations, since to claim otherwise would render the use of specialist advice meaningless. This approach has therefore ruled out the applicability of contributory negligence on the part of the client in cases of justified reliance on the professional.[19]

A source of interpretative complexity was introduced in 2003 by a legislative provision which, by way of derogation from the general principle of personal liability, focused administrative tax penalties exclusively on the taxpayer as a legal person, excluding the individual liability of directors or representatives who actually commit the infringement in the interests of the entity. This provision, designed to avoid double penalties for companies, has generated significant debate regarding its compatibility with the general rules on joint liability, particularly in relation to external professionals. The Court of Cassation initially held that penalties apply exclusively to the legal entity, excluding any joint liability of natural persons, regardless of the existence of an employment relationship with the entity. However, it clarified that this exclusion applies only where the natural person has acted in the interest and for the benefit of the legal entity: those who have acted in their own exclusive interest remain personally liable. This gave rise to a grey area in which an external professional who had acted in the interest of the client-company could invoke the exclusion, whereas one who had pursued their own interest could not, fuelling a significant dispute that was only finally resolved in 2024.[20]

In the same year, the Court of Cassation held that the general rules on complicity in tax offences are fully compatible with the provision that imposes penalties on the legal person, and that the latter applies exclusively to persons within the corporate structure, that is, to those acting by virtue of an employment relationship with the entity. External professionals, therefore, remain subject to the general rules on complicity, regardless of whether they obtained a personal economic advantage in addition to their professional remuneration: such an advantage may be relevant as circumstantial evidence, but does not constitute a requirement for establishing liability. The same case law has also specified that the court must carry out a comprehensive assessment of the available circumstantial evidence, verifying whether, taken together and complementing one another, they are sufficient to demonstrate the contributory role of the accomplice in the commission of the offence, thereby ruling out any atomistic approach that assesses each piece of evidence in isolation.[21]

In criminal law, case law has maintained a distinct approach, yet one that is consistent with the overall trend. The Court of Cassation has consistently affirmed the principle that tax obligations are non-derogable and that criminal liability cannot be delegated: entrusting an external professional with the task of preparing and submitting tax returns does not exempt the taxpayer from criminal liability in the event of non-compliance, as the obligation and the related duty to monitor the professional’s performance remain with the person delegating the task. It follows that, on the criminal side, the taxpayer’s liability is fixed and non-transferable, whilst the professional may be held liable as an accomplice in addition to – and not in place of – that of the client.[22]

The established case law, at least until 2025, has therefore outlined a model structured across three distinct yet interconnected levels. In terms of civil liability, the professional is liable for breach of contract where they have failed to observe the required standard of due diligence, with an obligation to compensate for all damages arising from the breach, including penalties incurred by the client. In terms of administrative liability, they may be held liable jointly with the taxpayer where they have made a material and psychological contribution to the tax offence, regardless of personal gain, provided there is no formal relationship with the entity. In terms of criminal liability, they may be held liable as an accomplice to tax offences where they have causally contributed to their commission, with the possibility of administrative penalties being converted against the professional in the event of a final criminal conviction. This evolutionary path laid the foundations for the further development brought about by the recent rulings of 2026, which definitively consolidated the paradigm of the professional as a figure entrusted with a guaranteeing function in the interest of the integrity of the tax system.

3.2. Recent developments in case law

The rulings of the Court of Cassation in March 2026 represent the further developmental phase of the evolution of Italian case law regarding the liability of tax professionals. They follow the path laid out in previous years, but at the same time mark an additional step: from a predominantly clarifying approach, there is a shift towards a genuine systematic re-examination of the criteria for attributing liability in the context of administrative tax sanctions. This approach was given concrete form, in particular, in Orders Nos. 5639, 5638, 5636, and 5635 of 12 March 2026, in which the Tax Division of the Court of Cassation dealt in a coordinated manner with essentially identical cases concerning the joint and several liability of accountants for tax offences committed by their clients, consisting of improper cost deductions and irregularities in VAT deductions.[23] In all cases, the professionals had submitted the returns electronically without having physically drafted them, but were simultaneously responsible for maintaining the accounting records. The Regional Tax Commissions had ruled out their liability, classifying them as mere electronic intermediaries and requiring, for the purposes of liability, proof of an economic benefit in addition to their professional fees. The Court of Cassation overturned this approach in its entirety, codifying the evolving legal position of the last two decades into binding legal principles. It was affirmed that, concerning administrative tax penalties, joint liability (within the meaning of Article 9 of Legislative Decree No. 472 of 1997) may also apply to a professional who, whilst not engaging in the conduct typical of the offence, performs acts or omissions capable of enabling or facilitating the violation. Such liability may also arise in the case of the mere electronic transmission of tax returns not drafted by the professional, where the latter is responsible for maintaining the accounting records, since this position entails an obligation to verify the consistency of the returns and their compliance with the law,[24] in accordance with a standard of care commensurate with the nature of the activity carried out.

In this context, it is essential to clarify that the attribution of liability to the tax professional does not depend on the formal qualification of their role, nor on the existence of a direct economic benefit derived from the unlawful conduct. Rather, it is grounded in a functional assessment of the professional’s contribution to the violation, which must be evaluated in light of the overall structure of the mandate and the informational position occupied by the adviser.

This jurisprudential pivot should be understood first in doctrinal rather than rhetorical terms. The Court of Cassation does not abandon legality, nor does it impose a general duty on the professional to guarantee the taxpayer’s compliance. Rather, it gives legal significance to the concrete function performed by the adviser within the client’s tax information system. The formal label of “electronic intermediary” is not decisive where the same professional also maintains the accounting records and therefore occupies a position from which inconsistencies, irregular deductions, or unlawful VAT treatment may be detected.

The doctrinal movement is compatible with a broader realist critique of formal neutrality, but the point must be stated carefully. The relevance of New Legal Realism is not that it substitutes sociological judgment for legal doctrine. Its relevance is that it explains why legal systems may need to examine how formally neutral professional conduct operates in practice. A professional mandate may appear formally limited, yet functionally place the adviser in a position of control, verification, or facilitation. The March 2026 rulings give that functional position doctrinal consequences through established legal categories: causal contribution, omission, qualified diligence, and awareness or qualified knowability.

The connection with the literature on “accountability sabotage” and abusive professional enablement is therefore indirect but useful. It does not prove the Italian tax-law rule. The rule must be proved by Italian statutory and case law sources. It does, however, help identify the underlying problem that the Italian cases address: professional neutrality can become analytically misleading when it ignores the professional’s practical role in making the unlawful strategy possible. In this narrower sense, the Italian case law does not represent a rejection of formal legality. It represents a doctrinally controlled effort to prevent formal role-description from defeating substantive attribution where the professional’s conduct has materially facilitated the violation.[25]

This principle is based on a review of the liability framework, which is structured along several lines. First and foremost, the concept of the “mere online intermediary” as a factor excluding liability is definitively superseded: the Court adopts a substantive and unified conception of the professional mandate, emphasising the consultant’s overall position in the relationship with the client, such that when the consultant is also involved in accounting management, a duty of qualified control arises over the content of the declarations, regardless of who actually drafted them. Furthermore, the requirement of personal financial gain has been definitively abandoned: the professional’s liability no longer presupposes proof of a benefit beyond the fee, but is based exclusively on the conscious causal contribution to the breach, with the gain being at most of circumstantial relevance. Finally, the rulings definitively clarify the relationship between the rules on complicity and Article 7 of Decree-Law No 269 of 2003, classifying that provision as exceptional and limiting its scope of application solely to persons within the corporate organisation, to the exclusion of external professionals, for whom the general rules on complicity continue to apply.

The cornerstone of the system is thus the concept of causal contribution, which the court rulings set out in detail. This may consist of either active conduct or omissions, provided that they are capable of enabling or facilitating the commission of the offence. Liability for omission represents one of the most significant developments: the professional is liable even when they fail to carry out checks or verifications which, given their expertise and the mandate received, were reasonably required.[26] Structurally, causal contribution requires the coexistence of a material element – the act or omission that facilitates the breach – and a psychological element consisting of awareness of the link between one’s own conduct and the tort. The assessment, however, takes on a highly concrete character, as it must take into account the nature of the mandate, the complexity of the operations, and the information available to the professional.

In this context, the principle of due diligence takes on central importance. The tax professional is required not only to carry out the requested services but also to perform a substantive review: they must verify the consistency between tax returns and accounting records, ensure compliance with the regulations, report any anomalies, and, in the most obvious cases, refrain from submitting the returns. This obligation also applies when tax returns are prepared by other parties, requiring a cross-check that positions the professional as the guarantor of the consistency of the client’s tax information system. The framework outlined above reflects a progressive functionalisation of liability, based not on the formal position of the individual but on the role actually played in the dynamics of the offence: the professional is no longer viewed as a neutral executor, but rather as an individual with specialist expertise that places them in a privileged position to prevent and detect irregularities.

What emerges is a model in which the tax professional assumes a guaranteeing function in the interests of the integrity of the tax system, albeit in a conditional form. The notion of a “conditional gatekeeper” refers to a professional who is not automatically or generally liable for the unlawful conduct of others, but whose liability is contingent upon the fulfilment of specific conditions. These include: the existence of a professional mandate conferring upon the adviser a degree of control – albeit partial – over the client’s tax-relevant information; the establishment of a causal contribution, whether by act or omission, to the commission of the violation; and a state of awareness of the irregularity, which may also take the form of qualified knowability. The qualifier “conditional” thus serves to exclude both forms of strict liability grounded in the mere exercise of the professional activity and any general duty to prevent all unlawful conduct on the part of the client. Instead, it confines liability within the boundaries defined by the breach of the heightened duties of diligence inherent in the professional mandate.

They are not required to prevent every possible breach by the client, but must fulfil obligations of control, verification, and reporting in accordance with a high standard of diligence: failure to comply with these obligations, where it permits or facilitates the breach, entails liability as an accomplice, regardless of whether personal gain is obtained or the tax returns are actually drawn up. This model fits coherently within the broader Italian penalty system, characterised by a dual administrative and criminal track, in which there is a common tendency to emphasize the substantive role of the individual over their formal position.

There is, however, no shortage of critical perspectives. The extension of liability, particularly through the recognition of omissions, raises questions regarding the limits of the duty of care and the risk of excessively broad liability, requiring a delicate balance to be struck between the effectiveness of the enforcement of tax violations and the protection of the advisory function. Ultimately, the 2026 rulings mark the consolidation of a paradigm in which the tax professional is positioned as a genuine “conditional gatekeeper” of the tax system, called upon to perform a function of monitoring and safeguarding tax compliance that goes beyond mere technical assistance and translates into a responsibility aimed at safeguarding the overall integrity of the system.

4. Participatory liability and convergence with criminal law models

To understand the scope of the developments described in the preceding sections, it is useful to begin with a brief overview of the Italian legal framework regarding complicity, which forms the doctrinal foundation upon which the case law concerning tax professionals is built.

The Italian Criminal Code regulates the complicity of persons in a crime through a general clause that provides for the liability of anyone who participates in the commission of an unlawful act, regardless of the nature and extent of the contribution made.[27] This approach – common to civil law systems of the Roman tradition, and in part analogous to the concept of aiding and abetting in common law systems – is based on a unified conception of complicity: all participants are liable for the same offence, albeit with possible differences in penalties depending on the role played. In principle, no specific subjective qualification is required of the accomplice: it is sufficient that they have made a causally relevant contribution to the commission of the offence and acted with the awareness of acting in concert with others in committing the act.

Unlike the German model – which draws a clear distinction between Täterschaft (perpetration) and Teilnahme (accessory participation, in the forms of instigation and complicity), attributing decisive importance to control over the act (Tatherrschaft) – and the Anglo-Saxon model – which constructs the liability of a third party around typical concepts such as conspiracy or aiding and abetting, with their own requirements of actus reus and mens rea – the Italian system tends to emphasise the causal significance of the contribution, even when this is merely facilitative, without formally distinguishing between perpetrators and accomplices at the level of the abstract legal concept.

In the tax sphere, this general framework is applied through a specific provision governing complicity in administrative tax offences (see Article 9 of Legislative Decree No. 472 of 18 December 1997), which provides that, where several persons participate in an offence, each shall be liable to the extent of their own contribution. This provision borrows the fundamental criteria for attribution from criminal law – causal contribution and mental element – adapting them to the context of administrative sanctions. The result is a hybrid system in which the dogmatic categories of criminal law operate within a formally administrative sanctions regime: it is precisely within this framework that case law has developed the model of liability for tax professionals analysed in the following pages.

The framework outlined by the rulings of the Court of Cassation, which characterizes the tax professional as a conditional gatekeeper and bases liability on causal contribution – including by omission – assessed in the light of a standard of qualified diligence, is not an isolated phenomenon within tax law. Rather, it forms part of a broader evolutionary trend characterised by the gradual assimilation of conceptual categories specific to criminal law, particularly with regard to the issue of complicity, as well as within a supranational context that increasingly values the active role of intermediaries in the prevention of tax offences.

A central role in this development is played by the rules governing joint liability for tax offences, which provide that, where several persons are involved in the offence, each is liable to the extent of their own contribution.[28] This provision, interpreted in the light of the most recent case law, approximates the criminal law model of joint criminal liability, allowing relevance to be attributed not only to the conduct of the principal perpetrator, but also to all causally relevant contributions, whether active or passive.[29] The doctrine of complicity, traditionally developed in the criminal law sphere, has thus provided an interpretative framework for identifying the conditions under which a professional may be held liable for violations committed by a client: joint liability is based on the specific role played in the commission of the offence, requiring a causal contribution, a form of cooperation, and an adequate subjective element of awareness.

Recent rulings by the Supreme Court fit coherently within this framework, clarifying that the professional is not liable merely for carrying out their professional activities, but only when their intervention – including by omission – has made the violation possible or facilitated it, and when they were in a position to perceive its unlawfulness in light of the professional standards required of them. The model of the conditional gatekeeper is therefore grounded in the logic of complicity, adapted to the tax context.[30]

Of particular significance is the recognition of liability for omission, which represents one of the main points of contact with criminal law. The criminal law principle that failing to prevent an event is equivalent to causing it where there is a legal duty to act has not been directly transposed into tax law, but case law has incorporated its rationale emphasizing the control and supervision obligations incumbent upon the professional:[31] failure to verify the accuracy of declarations or failure to report irregularities may therefore constitute contributory liability for the offence, where they are causally relevant.[32]

At this point, the comparative discussion must be kept within defined limits. The purpose of the UK and SLAPP-related material is not to assimilate administrative tax sanctions to litigation misconduct.[33] The two fields differ in legal source, institutional setting, affected interests, and remedial structure. The comparison is instead functional. Both fields require a legal system to decide when a professional may rely on the neutrality of their role and when that neutrality is defeated by the professional’s knowing, reckless, or structurally significant contribution to a client’s abusive strategy. This is why SLAPP-related professional conduct can be used as a comparator: it exposes the same boundary problem in a different legal environment.

A functional comparison with the United Kingdom helps clarify the limits of the Italian model precisely because the two systems do not proceed in the same way. In Italy, the March 2026 rulings locate the professional’s potential liability within the framework of administrative tax complicity. The decisive questions are whether the adviser’s act or omission made a causal contribution to the violation, whether the professional mandate placed the adviser in a position of qualified control or verification, and whether the subjective element required for participatory liability is satisfied. The analysis remains anchored to tax sanctions and to the statutory relationship between Article 9 of Legislative Decree No. 472 of 1997 and Article 7 of Decree-Law No. 269 of 2003.[34]

The UK material serves a different function.[35] It illustrates how another legal order confronts the boundary between legitimate professional representation and professional enablement of abuse, especially in contexts involving legal threats, abusive litigation strategies, and SLAPP-like conduct. In SRA v. Hurst, the disciplinary proceedings concerned the alleged use of legal instruments in a manner said to intimidate journalistic activity. That setting is not tax law, and it should not be treated as a doctrinal analogue of Italian administrative sanctions. Its relevance lies in the shared structural question: when does professional assistance cease to be protected as neutral representation because the professional has helped design or implement an abusive strategy?

The subsequent judicial treatment of Hurst, together with decisions such as El Haddad and disciplinary proceedings such as SRA v. Gill, also shows why the comparison must be cautious. English law appears more reluctant to infer professional misconduct or liability from suspicion, doubt, or the mere fact of acting for a client whose conduct is later criticized. That reluctance reflects values that cannot be dismissed as formalism alone: client representation, evidentiary discipline, professional independence, and the danger of imposing investigative duties that may exceed the professional mandate. These considerations also matter for Italian law. They help identify the point at which a gatekeeper model may become excessive.

The comparison, therefore, refines, rather than displaces, the Italian argument. It shows that the Italian model is distinctive because it does not rely on a general moralized condemnation of professional enablement. It remains conditional. Liability arises only where the professional’s mandate, informational position, conduct, or omission, and mental element satisfy the criteria for participatory attribution. The SLAPP-related material is useful because it exposes the same neutrality problem in a different field; it should not be used to claim that English law has adopted the Italian model, or that all professional assistance to abusive clients should attract liability. From this perspective, Grasso’s analysis of professional enablement and “accountability sabotage” remains relevant, not as a source of Italian tax doctrine, but as a socio-legal lens for identifying how formally lawful professional conduct may become functionally abusive when it supplies the architecture through which another actor evades accountability.[36]

The benchmark against which these obligations are assessed is the standard of professional diligence that the Civil Code imposes on professional service providers, translating into a duty to exercise substantive control over the consistency of accounting information[37] and the compliance of tax returns with tax regulations.

Convergence with criminal law models is also evident with regard to the relationship between individual liability and corporate liability. The provision concentrating administrative tax penalties on the legal person has been interpreted restrictively, limiting its application to individuals within the corporate organisation, whilst external professionals remain subject to the general rules on complicity, following a logic that bears significant similarities to the system of corporate liability for offences committed in their interest.[38]

This development takes place within a European and international context characterised by a growing focus on the role of tax intermediaries. Within this framework, the legal and ethical accountability of professional enablers has emerged as a central point of contention, bridging the gap between fiscal misconduct and broader systemic abuses of the law. Rather than viewing tax non-compliance in isolation, contemporary legal scholarship increasingly conceptualizes the structural role of professionals – whether designing aggressive tax avoidance mechanisms or orchestrating abusive civil lawfare – as a unified phenomenon centered on the strategic manipulation of formal legal rules to shield power and evade public accountability.[39] Within the OECD, the principles of cooperative compliance and the recommendations on combating base erosion and profit shifting emphasize the importance of collaboration between tax authorities and taxpayers, assigning professionals an active role in preventing tax risks and promoting transparency. At the European Union level, anti-money laundering legislation imposes stringent customer due diligence obligations on professionals, retention of information, and reporting of suspicious transactions,[40] reflecting a view of the professional as a party required to play an active role in the prevention of criminal offences. Further confirmation of this trend can be found in the European rules on the prior reporting obligations incumbent on tax intermediaries in relation to potentially aggressive cross-border arrangements, which base liability on knowledge – actual or potential – of the transaction and on the role played by the professional in its structuring or implementation. The case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union has, in turn, emphasised the substantial role of economic operators and intermediaries in preventing abuse and fraud, particularly in the field of VAT,[41] recognising the relevance of knowledge or the possibility of knowing of the offence for the purposes of attributing liability.

The convergence between participatory liability and criminal law models is also reflected in the international literature, which has analyzed the phenomenon of professional enablers from a criminological perspective. This literature has highlighted how accountants and lawyers sometimes act as “architects” of abusive tax schemes, designed and marketed as professional products, or as parties providing legal support for the structuring of transactions through shell companies or other legal instruments. In both cases, the professional’s contribution is not merely executive, but assumes a structural role in the commission of the offence. This observation reinforces the logic underlying the evolution of Italian case law: joint liability is not an exceptional response, but the natural consequence of recognizing the substantial role that the professional plays in the dynamics of the tax offence.[42]

Overall, the increasingly widespread use of the concept of complicity in the administrative and tax sphere indicates a structural convergence with criminal law, based on three key principles: the centrality of causal contribution, the extension to omissions, and the application of high standards of professional diligence. This phenomenon has been effectively described in legal scholarship as the “criminalization of administrative sanctioning law,” understood not as a harshening of sanctions, but as the progressive adoption of interpretative categories specific to criminal law, such as culpability, participation, and personal liability.[43] This results in a substantial convergence between criminal law models and administrative-tax models, which, whilst retaining their autonomy, now constructs the liability of the tax professional according to more consistent and proportionate criteria, in line with the European principles of effectiveness, proportionality, and legal certainty. The integration of these criteria makes it possible to define the scope of participatory liability with greater precision, whilst ensuring a balance between the need to protect the tax system and that of safeguarding the role of the professional, within a framework now fully integrated into the supranational legal context.

5. Implications for professional integrity: an international perspective

The developments outlined above form part of a broader context of transformation within contemporary legal systems, in which intermediaries are being assigned an increasingly central role in the prevention of economic offences.

From this perspective, the most significant aspect is not so much the extension of liability in terms of penalties, but rather the gradual redefinition of the professional’s role, which is increasingly less about merely carrying out technical tasks and increasingly more focused on safeguarding the integrity of the financial and tax systems. This development is particularly evident at the international level, where we are witnessing the emergence of regulatory models that impose independent obligations of assessment, monitoring, and reporting on intermediaries.

One of the first areas in which this transformation has become apparent is that of international tax transparency. As part of the BEPS (Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) project, the OECD has promoted instruments designed to combat aggressive tax planning, including the Mandatory Disclosure Rules, which were transposed into EU law through Directive (EU) 2018/822 (known as DAC6).[44] These instruments impose on tax intermediaries obligations to report in advance on potentially abusive cross-border arrangements, identified on the basis of specific risk indicators (so-called “hallmarks”),[45] assigning the professional an active role in the ex-ante assessment of transactions. This creates a model of “advanced transparency,” in which the professional no longer intervenes solely at the execution stage, but is called upon to contribute to the prevention of tax risk through the analysis and screening of potentially critical transactions. This approach marks a significant shift from a reactive to a preventive approach, consistent with the evolution already observed at the domestic level.

A similar trend emerges in the field of anti-money laundering, regulated at the European level by the anti-money laundering directives and transposed into Italian law. In this context, the professional is subject to detailed obligations regarding customer due diligence, transaction monitoring, and the reporting of suspicious activities, based on a risk-based approach.

These developments are linked to the broader international debate on the role of “enablers:” individuals and organisations that, although not always the principal perpetrators of the underlying misconduct, may supply the technical expertise, institutional legitimacy, or legal infrastructure through which the misconduct is made possible. This literature is relevant to the present article only insofar as it helps locate Italian administrative tax complicity within a wider debate on professional intermediation. The doctrinal basis of liability remains domestic; the comparative materials serve to test whether the same boundary problem appears elsewhere.

In this context, the UK model of “failure to prevent,” firstly introduced by the Bribery Act 2010, is significant because it shows one legislative technique for addressing intermediary risk.[46] Liability is not based on the professional’s abstract status, but on the failure to maintain adequate organisational safeguards against specified forms of misconduct. This differs from the Italian model, which proceeds through participatory liability and qualified professional diligence. The functional commonality is narrower: both approaches reject the idea that formal distance from the principal violation necessarily defeats accountability.

SLAPP-related professional conduct should be placed within this same limited frame. It is not evidence of tax liability, nor is it a substitute for the Italian statutory analysis. It is an example of a neighboring problem in professional regulation: legal expertise may be used not merely to advise, but to operationalize an abusive strategy while preserving the appearance of formal legality. The value of the SLAPP comparison is therefore diagnostic. It helps show why the neutrality of professional assistance must sometimes be tested by reference to function, knowledge, and practical contribution, rather than by role description alone.

Although the Italian legal system does not provide a perfectly equivalent figure, a significant functional convergence can be observed. In both tax-intermediary regulation and professional-misconduct debates, the central issue is whether the professional has remained within legitimate advisory or representative activity or has crossed into the facilitation of abuse. The convergence should not be overstated. The duties, procedures, sanctions, and evidentiary thresholds differ. What converges is the legal problem, not the doctrinal solution.

A comparison between the two systems reveals an asymmetric approach. Italian case law appears willing, within the framework of existing statutory provisions on administrative tax complicity, to give weight to the professional’s functional position, informational access, and omission to verify irregularities. The March 2026 rulings illustrate this judicial development. The English materials point in a different direction. They suggest that, outside specific legislative frameworks such as failure-to-prevent offences, courts and tribunals may require a demanding showing of knowledge, reasoning, or professional misconduct before imposing liability or discipline on advisers acting within a representative mandate. As a matter of fact, while SRA v. Hurst[47] signals a growing regulatory appetite for accountability in the UK, the subsequent annulment of the sanction by the High Court on grounds of insufficient reasoning suggests that the English judiciary continues to demand particularly rigorous evidentiary and motivational standards before departing from the established paradigm.

This difference should be presented as an evidentiary and institutional contrast, not as a simple opposition between Italian realism and English formalism. English caution reflects identifiable legal concerns: the protection of representation, the danger of hindsight reasoning, the evidentiary gap between suspicion and knowledge, and the need to avoid converting advisers into general investigators of their clients. Those concerns are relevant to the Italian debate as well, because they mark the limits of any gatekeeper model. The Italian approach is defensible only if it remains conditional, source-based, and tied to the professional’s actual mandate and causal contribution.

International research has documented concrete cases that effectively illustrate the dynamics whereby professional input shifts from legitimate technical assistance to the facilitation of unlawful conduct. The Norwegian Transocean case – in which certain tax advisers were investigated for allegedly facilitating tax evasion on a historic scale through a series of cross-border corporate transactions – represents a paradigmatic example of how a professional’s technical expertise can be used to structure transactions which, whilst formally compliant with the rules, pursue objectives of tax avoidance. The case also highlights the evidential difficulties that legal systems face in drawing the line between lawful tax planning and a knowing contribution to unlawful conduct, difficulties that recur, in various forms, in the Italian context as well[48] More generally, research conducted as part of the VIRTEU project[49] has highlighted how the proximity between professionals and public authorities makes interactions between them inherently problematic, with the risk that professional intermediaries act as a conduit between public officials and individuals seeking to evade tax obligations, fuelling dynamics of institutional capture that are difficult to detect from the outside.[50]

Overall, a coherent picture emerges in which tax transparency and the prevention of money laundering converge to redefine the professional’s role, imposing upon them not only obligations towards the client but also duties aimed at safeguarding the public interest.

This configuration is consistent with the gatekeeper theory developed in the international literature, according to which certain individuals act as a filter regarding access to the economic and financial system.[51] From this perspective, the professional is called upon to act as an advanced safeguard of the system, through the adoption of appropriate controls, the independent assessment of transactions, and, where necessary, cooperation with the authorities. This results in a responsibility increasingly oriented towards prevention, which complements – without overlapping – the participatory responsibility outlined at an internal level, completing the picture in what is now a fully international context.

A conditional gatekeeper model also raises risks that must be acknowledged. If the professional’s duty of verification is framed too broadly, it may become indistinguishable from a general duty to police the client’s conduct. That would be difficult to reconcile with legality, professional autonomy, client confidentiality, and the practical limits of advisory mandates. The better view is therefore not that professionals should be liable whenever they could have discovered an irregularity. Liability should require a legally relevant mandate, access to the relevant information, a concrete failure to perform the verification required by the professional role, causal contribution to the violation, and the necessary subjective element. This is the line that prevents the conditional gatekeeper model from becoming strict liability under another name.

The comparative materials, therefore, support only a limited conclusion. They do not show that all legal systems are converging toward the same doctrine of professional liability. They show that different legal systems are struggling with a common structural question: how to preserve the legitimate functions of professional advice while preventing professional expertise from becoming a mechanism for evasion, concealment, intimidation, or abuse. The Italian contribution to that debate lies in its use of participatory administrative tax liability as a conditional gatekeeper model. The SLAPP and UK materials are useful because they test the boundaries of that model.

6. Concluding Remarks

In light of the analysis carried out, it is clear that the evolution of tax professionals’ liability has not led to a generalised extension of liability for the acts of others, but rather to a redefinition of the criteria for attribution based on an assessment of the role actually played by the professional in the course of the offence. Moving beyond the traditional paradigm of absolute neutrality does not imply a curtailment of the autonomy of the professional role, but rather the emergence of a substantive assessment criterion that allows for a distinction to be drawn between the legitimate exercise of the profession and participation in the offence. From this perspective, liability is personal and not automatic, requiring the establishment of an actual contribution and a breach of the required professional standards.

Case law has progressively identified suitable criteria for drawing this line of demarcation, distinguishing between lawful professional services – which remain so even when the client pursues unlawful aims, in the absence of conscious cooperation – and cases in which the professional makes a concrete and functional contribution to the commission of the offence, up to the most serious cases of stable involvement in organised contexts.[52] This distinction responds to the need to balance two fundamental interests: on the one hand, the protection of the professional’s autonomy and technical role; on the other, the need to effectively combat complex unlawful activities, in which the contribution of intermediaries may prove decisive.

In this context, the professional emerges as a conditional gatekeeper, whose responsibility depends on the actual impact of their conduct and their ability to fulfil their obligations regarding oversight, assessment, and critical judgment, which characterise professional practice. Performance is no longer assessed solely in formal terms, but also in light of its impact on the integrity of the economic system.

The evolution of domestic law appears consistent with selected international trends that attribute an increasingly central role to intermediaries in systems for the prevention of economic misconduct. This consistency should not be overstated. DAC6, anti-money laundering duties, failure-to-prevent offences, disciplinary scrutiny of abusive representation, and Italian administrative tax complicity remain distinct legal mechanisms. Their value for the present argument is functional: each reveals pressure on the older assumption that the professional’s formal advisory role is enough, by itself, to preserve neutrality. The Italian model remains distinctive because it is not a general theory of professional liability for client misconduct. It is a conditional form of gatekeeping rooted in the professional’s actual mandate, informational position, causal contribution, and subjective awareness or qualified knowability. The SLAPP comparison confirms the importance of that conditional structure. It shows the danger of professional expertise being used to operationalise abuse, but also the need to avoid collapsing legitimate representation into liability by association. The defensible claim, therefore, is not that professional neutrality has disappeared. It is that neutrality has become legally conditional where the professional’s own conduct or omission materially facilitates the unlawful strategy.

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[1] In legal scholarship, on the nineteenth-century liberal conception of criminal liability and the role of the professional as a neutral auxiliary, see MANTOVANI F., Criminal Law. General Part, Cedam, Padua, 2025; ROXIN C., Täterschaft und Tatherrschaft, De Gruyter, Berlin, 2006 (partial Italian translation). For a historical perspective on professional secrecy as a safeguard of the autonomy of the defence, see VASSALLI G., entry ‘Segreto professionale’, in Enciclopedia del diritto, vol. XLI, Giuffrè, Milan, 1989.

[2] In Anglo-American literature, on the concept of ‘deliberate ignorance’ (or ‘willful blindness’) and on the role of professionals in organised economic crime, see LAUFER W.S., Corporate Bodies and Guilty Minds, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2006; MANN K., Defending White-Collar Crime: A Portrait of Attorneys at Work, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1988. In Italian legal scholarship, see ALESSANDRI A., Criminal Law and Economic Activities, Il Mulino, Bologna, 2010.

[3] See also LUBAN D., Lawyers and Justice: An Ethical Study, 1988; LUBAN D., ‘Contrived Ignorance’, in Georgetown Law Journal, 1999.

[4] In agreement with this view: SIMON W. H., The Practice of Justice, 1998; PARKER C., Regulation of Lawyers, 2004; On the concept of functional neutrality and its limits, see SCHÜNEMANN B., Der Rechtsanwalt als Organ der Rechtspflege, in Festschrift für Roxin, De Gruyter, Berlin, 2001; in Italian legal scholarship, see FIANDACA G. – MUSCO E., Criminal Law. General Part, Zanichelli, Bologna, 2021; on the general reconstructive aspects of the discipline, see also MAURO M., The Liability of the Consultant in Tax Law, Giappichelli, Milan, 2019

[5] As also held in Nye & Nissen v. United States; Rosemond v. United States; In Italian case law, most recently Criminal Cassation, Section I, 30 May 2025, (hearing 30 May 2025 – filed 28 August 2025) – No. 29930, concerning the consultant’s complicity in the commission of corporate offences; Criminal Cassation, Section V, 15 June 2022, (hearing 15 June 2022 – filed 30 September 2022) – No. 37101 on the necessity of the qualified psychological element for the purposes of the professional’s joint liability. In legal scholarship, see ROMANO M. – GRASSO G., Systematic Commentary on the Criminal Code, Vol. II, Giuffrè, Milan, 2012; G. DE FRANCESCO, Joint Participation in Offences, in Studium Iuris, 1988.

[6] On the similarity of the principle: United States v. Kovel; On the position of responsibility and its prerequisites in Italian criminal law, see Criminal Cassation Court, Section IV, 21 May 1998 (hearing of 21 May 1998 – filed 9 July 1999) – No. 8217; in legal scholarship, see SGUBBI F., Criminal liability for failure to prevent an event, Cedam, Padua, 1975; GRASSO G., The improper offence of omission. The objective structure of the offence, Giuffrè, Milan, 1983. On the professional secrecy of accountants, see, for example, Criminal Cassation, Section II, 18/10/2017, (hearing 18/10/2017 – filed 10/11/2017) – No. 51446.

[7] See Arthur Andersen LLP v. United States, with specific reference to ‘consciousness of wrongdoing’.

[8] In case law, Criminal Cassation, Section V, 12 June 2007 (hearing of 12 June 2007 – filed 12 July 2007) – No. 27330, on the distinction between lawful consultancy and qualified participation in an offence; Criminal Cassation, Section IV, Judgment of 15 April 2021 (hearing of 16 December 2020), No. 14202, concerning the involvement of professionals in tax offences. In legal scholarship, see PEDRAZZI C., Deception and Error in Offences against Property, Giuffrè, Milan, 1956; PAGLIARO A., Principles of Criminal Law. General Part, Giuffrè, Milan, 2003. On the distinction between material and moral complicity in Italian case law, see Criminal Cassation, Joint Divisions, 30 October 2003, No. 45276. In legal scholarship, see MANTOVANI F., Criminal Law. Special Part, vol. I, Cedam, Padua, 2022.

[9] LUBAN D., Legal Ethics and Human Dignity, Cambridge University Press, 2007; on the risk of “overcriminalisation”. See O’SULLIVAN J., The Federal Criminal “Code”, in American Criminal Law Review, 2006, where a critique of the expansion of liability is found.

[10] See United States v. Jewell; on conditional intent in general, see Criminal Cassation, Joint Divisions, 24 April 2014, No. 38343 (Thyssenkrupp case), which defined the criteria for distinguishing between conditional intent and conscious negligence; in legal scholarship, see FIANDACA G., On conditional intent in the most recent case law, between an objectivising-evidential approach and a general preventive message, in Contemporary Criminal Law, 2012; PULITANÒ D., The boundaries of intent. A reflection on the morality of criminal law, in Rivista italiana di diritto e procedura penale, 2013, pp. 22–54.

[11] On the US model of aiding and abetting and willful blindness, see Global-Tech Appliances, Inc. v. SEB S.A., 563 U.S. 754 (2011), in which the US Supreme Court affirmed the doctrine of deliberate ignorance; see also United States v. Rybicki, 354 F.3d 124 (2d Cir. 2003). In legal scholarship, see ASHWORTH A. – HORDER J., Principles of Criminal Law, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2019; ZAIBERT L., Philosophical Analysis and the Criminal Law, in Buffalo Criminal Law Review, 2000, also with reference to the risk of overextending liability.

[12] On the British model of ‘failure to prevent’, see Bribery Act 2010, s. 7; Criminal Finances Act 2017, s. 45–46, which introduce the liability of legal persons for failing to prevent tax evasion facilitated by associated persons. In the academic literature, see GOBERT J. and PUNCH M., Rethinking Corporate Crime, Butterworths, London, 2003; WELLS C., Corporations and Criminal Responsibility, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001.

[13] In European case law, Michaud v France, 6 December 2012 (Application No. 12323/11) (ECHR), which recognised that anti-money laundering obligations imposed on lawyers are compatible with the right to respect for private life and the protection of professional secrecy, provided they are accompanied by adequate procedural safeguards. Court of Justice of the European Union, Ordre des barreaux francophones et germanophone and others, Case C-305/05, 26 June 2007, on the compatibility of the Anti-Money Laundering Directive with the right to a fair trial.

[14] BOON A. – LEVIN J., The Ethics and Conduct of Lawyers in England and Wales, Hart Publishing, Oxford, 1999; ABEL R., Lawyers in the Dock, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008, in which the authors state that neutrality is not guaranteed by being a professional and must be constantly assessed in the light of actual conduct.

[15]In the legal literature, on the balance between the protection of economic order and professional autonomy, see LENAERTS K. and VAN NUFFEL P., European Union Law, Sweet & Maxwell, London, 2021; PALAZZO F., Corso di diritto penale, Giappichelli, Turin, 2024.

[16] On the regulatory framework governing the profession of chartered accountant and the related ethical guarantees, see Legislative Decree No. 139 of 28 June 2005, regulating the profession of chartered accountant and accounting expert; Code of Ethics of the National Council of Chartered Accountants and Accounting Experts, in its current version.

[17] In the academic literature, see TESAURO F., Istituzioni di diritto tributario, Utet, Turin, 2024; FALSITTA G., Manuale di diritto tributario. Parte generale, Cedam, Padua, 2023.

[18] In case law, the Court of Cassation, Civil Section III, in its judgment of 13 February 2026, (hearing 17/12/2025 – filed 13/02/2026) – No. 3215, held that there is a duty to carry out a substantive review of the consistency of accounting information and the compliance of tax returns with tax regulations, indirectly translating this into specific obligations regarding verification, independent data collection and the reporting of irregularities to the client. In legal scholarship, see CASTRONOVO C., La nuova responsabilità civile, Giuffrè, Milan, 2006; VISINTINI G., Trattato breve della responsabilità civile, Cedam, Padua, 2005.

[19] In case law, Civil Cassation, Section III, 18 July 2023, (hearing 21 April 2023 – filed 18 July 2023) – No. 20987, which ruled out contributory negligence on the part of the client who had relied on the professional due to their own lack of specific technical expertise; Civil Court of Cassation, Section II, 20 January 2017, No. 1584. In legal scholarship, see FRANZONI M., ‘L'illecito’, in Trattato della responsabilità civile, Giuffrè, Milan, 2010.

[20] In case law, Court of Cassation, Civil Division, 4 March 2026, (hearing 19 February 2026 – filed 4 March 2026) – No. 4883, which affirmed the exclusive application of the penalty to the legal person where the natural person acted in the interest of the entity, whilst at the same time setting the limit of exclusion for those who acted in their own personal interest. In legal scholarship, see BASILAVECCHIA M., Taxation and Forms of Protection. Lectures on Tax Litigation, Giappichelli, Turin, 2018; LUPI R., Tax Law. General Part, Giuffrè, Milan, 2005.

[21] In case law, Civil Court of Cassation, Tax Section, 25 March 2025, (hearing 5 December 2024 – filed 25 March 2025) – No. 7951, which affirmed the principle of a comprehensive, rather than piecemeal, assessment of circumstantial evidence for the purposes of proving complicity in tax offences. In legal scholarship, see TARUFFO M., La prova dei fatti giuridici, Giuffrè, Milan, 1992; FERRUA P., Il giudizio penale: fatto e valore giuridico, in La prova nel dibattimento penale, Giappichelli, Turin, 2010.

[22] In case law, Court of Cassation, Civil Section, Tax Division, 2 May 2024, (hearing 24 April 2024 – filed 2 May 2024) – No. 11861, on the non-delegability of tax obligations and the continued criminal liability of the taxpayer even where authority has been delegated to a professional. In legal scholarship, see LANZI A. – ALDROVANDI P., Criminal Tax Law, Wolters Kluwer, Milan, 2025; MUSCO E. – ARDITO F., Criminal Tax Law, Zanichelli, Bologna, 2021.

[23] The four orders represent a coordinated intervention by the Tax Division of the Court of Cassation in a series of similar cases, following a decision-making approach that the Court itself has adopted in other areas to determine binding guidelines on recurring issues.

[24] The principle established by the 2026 rulings has a precedent in the Criminal Cassation Court, Section V, 03/04/2018, (hearing 03/04/2018 – filed 17/07/2018) – No. 33152, which had already sought to emphasise the overall position of the accountant appointed for the purposes of establishing joint liability.

[25] See Court of Cassation, Tax Division, Orders Nos. 5635, 5636, 5638, and 5639 of 12 March 2026; Court of Cassation, Tax Division, 25 March 2025, No. 7951; and Court of Cassation, Civil Division, 4 March 2026, No. 4883. For an extensive epistemological mapping of how a formalist focus on procedural rules blinds legal systems to structural power imbalances, effectively enabling powerful actors to weaponize formal legality to produce profound injustice, see GRASSO C., Enabling Injustice: SLAPPs, Democratic Values, and the Price of Truth, in Buffalo Law Review, vol. 73, no. 5, 2025, pp. 1060–1061, 1078. Grasso labels this strict adherence to procedural mechanics at the expense of substantive justice as an “accountability sabotage” that subverts the spirit of the law while formalistically satisfying its black letters. On the critique of corporate "cosmetic compliance" as a parallel exploitative strategy, see also VOZZA D., Exploring Voluntary and Mandatory Compliance Programmes in the Field of Anticorruption, in MANACORDA S. – CENTONZE F. (eds.), Corporate Compliance on a Global Scale, Springer, 2022, p. 313.

[26] In comparative legal scholarship, see TADROS V., Criminal Responsibility, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005, on the structure of liability for omission in common law systems, highlighting certain differences regarding the standard of care required and the types of controls that may be expected.

[27] See Article 110 of the Italian Criminal Code.

[28] See Article 9 of Legislative Decree No. 472 of 18 December 1997. In legal literature, see BATISTONI FERRARA F.- BELLÈ B., Diritto tributario processuale, Cedam, Padua, 2020.

[29] See Article 110 of the Italian Criminal Code. For a comparison between the tax and criminal law provisions on complicity, see Criminal Cassation, Joint Divisions, 30 October 2003, No. 45276, on the general criteria for attributing complicity; in the literature, see ROMANO M. – GRASSO G., Systematic Commentary on the Criminal Code, op. cit.; FIORE C. – FIORE S., Criminal Law. General Part, Utet, Turin, 2023.

[30] For an operational definition of the concept of a conditional gatekeeper and the conditions that trigger and limit its function, please refer to the discussion above, cap. 4.

[31] See Article 40(2) of the Criminal Code. In legal scholarship, see SGUBBI F., Criminal Liability for Failure to Prevent an Event, op. cit.; GRASSO G., Il reato omissivo improprio, op. cit. For the incorporation of this rationale into tax law, see Court of Cassation, Civil Section VI, 18 April 2019, (hearing 7 February 2019 – filed 18 April 2019) – No. 10975.

[32] The case confirms the British legal system’s growing focus on the role of the professional as a potential enabler of abusive strategies, marking a retreat from the paradigm of neutrality that is functionally convergent with that observed in Italian case law, albeit situated on a disciplinary rather than strictly punitive plane. See, among others, Court of Cassation, Tax Division, Orders Nos. 5639, 5638, 5636 and 5635 of 12 March 2026; Court of Cassation, Tax Division, 25 March 2025, No. 7951; Court of Cassation, Civil Division, 4 March 2026, No. 4883; High Court of Justice (Chancery Division), El Haddad v. Al Rostamani International Exchange LLC [2024] EWHC 448 (Ch).

[33] The reference to SLAPPs is not intended to suggest that abusive litigation and administrative tax violations are doctrinally equivalent. The comparison is functional. Both contexts involve the possible misuse of professional expertise to transform formally available legal tools into mechanisms of abuse. The relevant common issue is the boundary between legitimate professional assistance and professional facilitation of wrongful conduct.

[34] For the baseline Italian position on holistic circumstantial evidence and administrative tax complicity, see Court of Cassation, Tax Division, Orders Nos. 5635, 5636, 5638, and 5639 of 12 March 2026; and Court of Cassation, Tax Division, 25 March 2025, No. 7951.

[35] For the corresponding English jurisprudence and disciplinary rulings on the boundaries of professional knowledge, see High Court of Justice (Chancery Division), El Haddad v. Al Rostamani International Exchange LLC [2024] EWHC 448 (Ch); and Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, Solicitors Regulation Authority Ltd v. Gill, Case No. 12775-2025 (Decision of 12 December 2025).

[36] For an interdisciplinary critique of how these strict judicial standards shield the professional "architects" of legal and economic misconduct, see GRASSO C., Enabling Injustice: SLAPPs, Democratic Values, and the Price of Truth, in Buffalo Law Review, vol. 73, no. 5, 2025, pp. 1082–1084.

[37] See Article 1176(2) of the Civil Code. In case law, Civil Court of Cassation, Section III, 13 February 2026, (hearing 17 December 2025 – filed 13 February 2026) – No. 3215, in which the Court of Cassation held that the professional responsible for preparing a tax return is required, in accordance with the duty of care set out in Article 1176(2) of the Civil Code, to verify that the legal conditions for the inclusion of the relevant data are met. See CASTRONOVO C., La nuova responsabilità civile, op. cit.; FAVALE R., La responsabilità civile del professionista, Cedam, Padua, 2011.

[38] See Article 7 of Decree-Law No. 269 of 30 September 2003, converted with amendments by Law No. 326 of 2 November 2003; Legislative Decree No. 231 of 8 June 2001; No. 231. On the parallels between the two systems, see PALIERO C.E. – TRAVI A., La sanzione amministrativa, Giuffrè, Milan, 1988; DE SIMONE G., Persone giuridiche e responsabilità da reato, ETS, Pisa, 2012.

[39] See GRASSO C., Enabling Injustice: SLAPPs, Democratic Values, and the Price of Truth, in Buffalo Law Review, vol. 73, no. 5, 2025, p. 1080, explicitly mapping the functional convergence between lawyers acting as the structural architects of abusive litigation strategies and professional intermediaries devising aggressive tax avoidance schemes within highly complex gray areas of the law. On the intimate interconnections between corporate power, tax crimes, and the systemic exploitation of procedural legal mechanisms, see also RING D. – GRASSO C., Beyond Bribery: Exploring the Intimate Interconnections Between Corruption and Tax Crimes, in Law and Contemporary Problems, vol. 85, 2023, p.7.

[40] Directive (EU) 2015/849 (4AMLD); Directive (EU) 2018/843 (5AMLD); Directive (EU) 2024/1640; Legislative Decree No 231 of 21 November 2007, as amended.

[41] Court of Justice of the European Union, Kittel and Recolta Recycling, Joined Cases C-439/04 and C-440/04, 6 July 2006, which held that a taxable person is liable where they knew or ought to have known that they were participating in a fraudulent transaction; Court of Justice of the European Union, Mahagében and Dávid, joined cases C-80/11 and C-142/11, 21 June 2012, on the limits of the denial of the right to deduct in cases of VAT fraud.

[42] RING D. – GRASSO C., Beyond Bribery, op. cit., pp. 33–36, in which the authors note in particular how accountants working in large audit firms can be regarded as ‘the architects’ of abusive tax schemes designed and offered as commercial products, whilst lawyers provide crucial legal support through, for example, the establishment of shell companies and the management of legal relationships between taxpayers, intermediaries and frontmen. On this point, see also ROSTAIN T. – REGAN M., Confidence Games: Lawyers, Accountants, and the Tax Shelter Industry, MIT Press, Cambridge (MA), 2016.

[43] The concept of the "criminalisation of administrative sanctions" is discussed in DELMAS-MARTY M. and TIEDEMANN G.A.S. (eds.), The Harmonisation of Criminal Sanctions in Europe, Société de législation comparée, Paris, 2003; from an Italian perspective, see PALIERO C.E., “Criminal matters” and administrative offences according to the European Court of Human Rights: a classic issue at a radical turning point, in Rivista italiana di diritto e procedura penale, 1985, p. 919.

From a critical perspective on the risk of an excessive expansion of liability, see ASHWORTH A., “Is the Criminal Law a Lost Cause?”, Law Quarterly Review, 2000; O’SULLIVAN J., “The Federal Criminal ‘Code’, American Criminal Law Review, 2006.

Conversely, in support of the progressive incorporation of criminal law categories into administrative sanctioning regimes as a means of ensuring systemic coherence, see PALIERO C.E. and TRAVI A., La sanzione amministrativa, op. cit.; DELMAS-MARTY M. and TIEDEMANN G.A.S. (eds.), L'harmonisation des sanctions pénales en Europe, Société de législation comparée, op. cit.

[44] Council Directive (EU) 2018/822 of 25 May 2018 amending Directive 2011/16/EU as regards the mandatory automatic exchange of information in the field of taxation in relation to reportable cross-border arrangements. In the academic literature, see PISTONE P., DAC6 and Mandatory Disclosure Rules, in EC Tax Review, 2019.

[45] Directive (EU) 2018/822 (DAC6). On the Italian transposition and the obligations incumbent on professionals, see ECtHR, Michaud v. France, 6 December 2012, No. 12323/11, cit.

[46] See the Bribery Act 2010, section 7 (Failure of commercial organisations to prevent bribery); the Criminal Finances Act 2017, sections 45–46 (Corporate offences of failure to prevent facilitation of tax evasion). In the academic literature, see GRASSO C., Peaks and Troughs of the English Deferred Prosecution Agreement: The Lesson Learned from the DPA between the SFO and ICBC SB Plc, Journal of Business Law, Issue 5, 2016, pp. 388-408; see also GOBERT J. – PUNCH M., Rethinking Corporate Crime, op. cit.; Law Commission, Criminal Liability in Regulatory Contexts, Consultation Paper No. 195, London, 2003. This legislative approach is also confirmed in case law, for example in the judgment El Haddad v. Al Rostamani [2024] EWHC 448 (Ch), which, whilst situated within the context of civil liability towards the client, offers further confirmation of the tendency of common law systems to construct the professional’s liability around the choice not to act, in line with the model of liability for omission developed by Italian case law. For a comparative perspective with the Italian legal system, see MARRA G., Prevention through Organisation and Criminal Law, Giappichelli, Turin, 2009.

[47] See above, note 31, where the case is analyzed in the context of liability for omission and the departure from the paradigm of neutrality. In the US context, significant confirmation of the trend towards scrutinizing the professional’s contribution to the implementation of abusive strategies can be found in the case of Flatley v. Mauro (Supreme Court of California, 27 July 2006, No. S128429, 39 Cal.4th 299, 139 P.3d 2). The Court held that the conduct of a lawyer who, in the client’s interest, sends communications that in themselves constitute a tort — in this case, criminal extortion — does not benefit from the protection of the anti-SLAPP statute, as it cannot be attributed to the legitimate exercise of the right to petition or freedom of expression. The relevant principle that appears to emerge from a comparative perspective is that the professional cannot invoke their role as the client’s agent to shield conduct which, by its content, independently constitutes a tort: the boundary between legitimate defence and the professional’s direct liability is drawn on the basis of the intrinsic lawfulness of the conduct in question, not the result pursued in the client’s interest. Although this logic is situated within a civil procedural context quite distinct from Italian tax law, it would appear to highlight a functional convergence with the model developed by the case law of the Court of Cassation: in both systems, professional status would not constitute an automatic shield, but a condition whose maintenance depends on compliance with the substantive limits of legitimate advice.

[48] RING D. – GRASSO C., Beyond Bribery, op. cit., pp. 40–42. The case concerned the company Transocean and some of its tax advisers, who were accused by the Norwegian prosecution service Økokrim of facilitating tax evasion through the sale of oil rigs to entities registered in the Cayman Islands during a brief transit outside Norwegian territorial waters. The advisers were ultimately acquitted in 2014, with the court recognizing the inadequacy of the interpretation of Norwegian and international tax law on which the charges were based. The case is significant not for its outcome, but for the fundamental question it raises identifying the boundary between lawful tax advice and a knowing contribution to the circumvention of the tax system.

[49] See https://www.corporatecrime.co.uk/virteu.

[50] RING D. – GRASSO C., Beyond Bribery, op. cit., pp. 35–36, in which the authors refer in particular to the findings of the VIRTEU national workshop dedicated to Italy, during which an officer of the Guardia di Finanza explained how recent investigations have brought to light an alarming level of systemic corruption involving officials of the Revenue Agency and professionals — including lawyers and accountants — acting as intermediaries between corrupt public officials and their clients.

[51] On the concept of the gatekeeper in international economic and legal literature, see COFFEE J.C. Jr., Gatekeepers: The Professions and Corporate Governance, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006, a seminal work on the concept in its modern sense; KRAAKMAN R., ‘Gatekeepers: The Anatomy of a Third-Party Enforcement Strategy’, in Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 1986, 2, 53. From a European perspective, see MOLONEY N., EU Securities and Financial Markets Regulation, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016. From a criminological and socio-legal perspective, on the role of professional intermediaries as potential enablers of tax abuse and on the need for a broader definitional approach encompassing both corruption and tax crimes to capture the complexity of their interconnections, see RING D. – GRASSO C., Beyond Bribery, op. cit., passim, and in particular pp. 1–10 for the theoretical framework and pp. 26–40 for the analysis of the role of professionals. The authors document how the figure of the gatekeeper can operate in a manner contrary to their theoretical function: rather than filtering access to the economic and financial system and preventing offences, the professional may become an instrument for their commission, with systemic consequences for democratic stability and tax justice.

[52] It should, however, at least be noted here that there is a further – distinct and more serious – case in which the professional is himself the architect and instigator, independently devising and marketing abusive tax schemes. This figure, documented in international criminological literature, has largely escaped punitive enforcement, both due to the evidential difficulties inherent in such cases and due to the dynamics of institutional capture which, in many instances, have tended to neutralise the authorities’ intervention against major professional intermediaries. In this context, an extension of the model of participatory liability developed by Italian case law — to include the professional promoter as a party independently liable, and not merely an accomplice — could represent a systematic response to the problem of evading enforcement, filling one of the most significant gaps in protection in the fight against complex tax offences. This development will certainly constitute one of the most significant challenges for the future evolution of the legal framework. For a more detailed discussion of this point, see notes 41 – 43. Suggested citation:

Bluebook: Francesco Maria D’Angelo, The New Responsibilities of Tax Professionals: From Neutral Intermediary to Conditional Gatekeeper with a Guarantee Function, CORPORATE CRIME OBSERVATORY, (June 17, 2026), https://www.corporatecrime.co.uk/post/complicity-tax-italy 

Harvard: D’Angelo, F. M. (2026) ‘The New Responsibilities of Tax Professionals: From Neutral Intermediary to Conditional Gatekeeper with a Guarantee Function’. Corporate Crime Observatory. Available at: https://www.corporatecrime.co.uk/post/complicity-tax-italy 

OSCOLA: Francesco Maria D’Angelo, ‘The New Responsibilities of Tax Professionals: From Neutral Intermediary to Conditional Gatekeeper with a Guarantee Function’ (Corporate Crime Observatory, 17 June 2026), https://www.corporatecrime.co.uk/post/complicity-tax-italy 

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