Voluntary tax correction
How to put right a missed payment.
Open30 June 2026 · Revenue Agency
You have received a tax notice (avviso bonario): the first seven days
The most common reaction is to put it to one side and think about it the following week. That is exactly what costs the most, because the advantage of this stage runs on a clock.
01 · Understand
First: understand what kind of tax notice it is
"Avviso bonario" (literally, a friendly notice) is the name everyone uses for the comunicazione di irregolarità, the notice of irregularity. It comes from the automated check or the formal check of your tax return: software compares what you declared with the payments on record and with the data sent in by employers, banks, pharmacies and insurers. When the two sets of figures do not match, the notice goes out.
It is not a cartella di pagamento (a formal payment demand) and it is not an accertamento (a tax assessment). It is a notice that comes before both, and the distinction matters for two reasons: the penalty is still reduced, and the dialogue with the Agenzia delle Entrate (the Italian Revenue Agency) is still open.
Pay attention to where it arrives. If you have a partita IVA (Italian VAT number), the notice travels by PEC (certified email) or ends up in your cassetto fiscale (your online tax records drawer): anyone who does not check their PEC notices it when the deadline has already passed. If you are a private individual, it arrives by registered post at your address of residence.
02 · Verify
Second: check it, do not pay on instinct
The notice shows the tax year, the line of the return being questioned and the calculation of tax, interest and penalty. Before you open your online banking, it is worth reading that calculation, because a not insignificant share of these notices close without anything being paid.
The cases that come up most often:
- A payment was made but was not matched. A wrong tax code or an incorrect reference year on the F24 (the tax payment form) means the payment exists but is not linked to the debt. It is resolved by asking for the form to be corrected.
- A credit from previous years was not taken into account. This happens when the credit was carried forward in the return but not offset in the way required.
- Tax withheld and certified was not reported by the withholding agent. The amount really was deducted from you, but it does not show up in the systems. You need the certificazione unica (the annual income and withholding statement) to prove it.
- A deductible expense was rejected for a formal defect, for example a missing traceable payment where one is required.
In all these cases you do not pay: you send in the documents and the notice is cancelled in full or in part.
03 · Paying on time
Third: if the amount is correct, the deadline is what counts
If the claim is well founded, paying within the deadline stated in the notice reduces the penalty considerably compared with the ordinary one. This is the advantage you lose by letting the deadline pass: afterwards, the amount is entered on the collection roll and a cartella arrives with the full penalty, the collection fee and further interest.
If the sum is not manageable in a single payment, you can already ask for payment in instalments at this stage, and you must ask before the deadline. The number of instalments depends on the amount. It needs saying clearly: missing an instalment once the plan has started means losing the benefit and takes everything back to square one, with the full penalty.
04 · Replying
Fourth: who replies to the tax notice, and how
You can submit the reply yourself, through the CIVIS service in the Agenzia's online reserved area, or through an authorised intermediary. The online route is almost always the quickest, because it leaves a trail and produces a written reply.
What you need depends on the case: the F24 payment receipts, the certificazione unica, the invoices or receipts for the expenses being questioned, an extract from the cassetto fiscale. This is material that usually already exists, scattered across drawers and email inboxes, and it needs gathering together once, and properly.
05 · The sequence
The seven-day sequence
Day 1
Find the date you received it and mark the deadline in your calendar. Everything else revolves around that date.
Day 2
Identify the tax year and dig out the return for that year, with the related F24 forms.
Days 3-4
Compare line by line what the Agenzia is questioning with what you paid. Isolate the items that do not add up.
Day 5
Decide: pay, pay part and dispute the rest, or dispute everything.
Days 6-7
Send the request for review with the documents, or prepare the F24 with the reduced penalty or the application for instalments.
Seven days are enough because most of the work is finding the right documents. Putting it off does not extend the deadline; it only narrows your options.
06 · To avoid
The mistake not to make
Paying everything straight away to get it off your mind, without checking. Once it has been paid, recovering a sum that was not due is possible but requires a refund application and a long wait, when a request for review before payment would have been enough. The second mistake, the mirror image of the first, is ignoring the notice in the hope that it will be forgotten: it will not be forgotten, it turns into a cartella.
Ravvedimento (voluntary correction) and penalties.
In short: the avviso bonario is the window in which the error costs least and can still be explained. The two wrong moves are paying without looking and not looking at all.
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