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Training is changing its pace. Images, sounds, words, texts come to life for a full, engaging experience. For a pleasant and captivating narrative.

Tax defense techniques are an ambitious project and a courageous challenge: to contribute to the construction of a new training model.

The evolutionary history of mankind tells us that the predisposition to learning is closely connected to experience, and that it is all the more intense and profound the more senses are involved in it.

On the other hand, our attention when we experience something is sharper when the situation is unpredictable. Faced with predictable situations, we tend to get bored and lose focus on what is happening.

All this mostly happens at the unconscious level, as do most of the things we do, despite seeming to have control over them.

These ideas form the basis of the search for a model capable of making the learning experience more enjoyable and participatory, overcoming what did not work in the systems we know: from slides to webinars to static video lessons.

That’s how this project was born with #Quotidianopiù #GiuffrèFL, an entire series of videos, divided into multiple seasons, on tax defense techniques. Starting from the fundamentals, reaching up to the judgment before the Court of Cassation and the Higher Courts, passing through appealable actions and intermediate stages of the tax litigation process.

The first season, dedicated to the fundamentals of the trial, i.e., discovering the contents of the defender’s toolbox in general, and specifically in tax matters, consists of five videos: the first, on the nature of judgment, whether more rational or intuitive; the second, on the basic techniques of dismantling an adversary’s thesis; the third, on the importance of contextualizing facts and evidence; the fourth, on the identification and interpretation of the relevant norms at play; the fifth, on building a defense thesis and the logical rules to observe in the choice and sequence of arguments to use.

The videos are of short duration (six or seven minutes at most), providing an accurate synthesis of theory and practice, with images, sounds, words, and texts.

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Gli speciali di Quotidiano Più -Episode 1

Judgment: intuition or reason?

How many times have you heard, "The first impression is what counts"? Well, that's exactly what usually happens in a trial.

It is a mistake to believe that judges decide based on reason. Judgment is never the final act of a logical and rational process. Rather, like all decisions, it is an intuitive operation influenced by judges' personal beliefs and biases, as well as the available information. Neuroscience has shown through magnetic resonance imaging that in the decision-making process, the areas of intuition and impulses are activated first, followed by those responsible for logical argumentation. In other words, the decision is made first, and then suitable arguments to support the decision are found.

The fact is, while we cannot influence judges' personal beliefs and biases because we usually do not know them in advance, even if we could imagine and grasp them, developing rational arguments alone would not be sufficient to achieve persuasive results. In these cases, only through argumentative techniques that directly appeal to emotions can we hope to create a breach in the solid structure of personal beliefs and biases. However, we can certainly influence the available information.

This is why it is essential to immediately present our thesis to the judges, illustrating what the evidence we have gathered and produced aims to demonstrate. Moreover, contrary to popular belief, judges make decisions quickly. Our brains are not patient; they always try to act swiftly, taking the shortest route. If judges only have the perspective and version of the accusing party and have yet to learn the defense's side, they are likely to make a decision even before hearing the defense's version.

It is much better to make our point of view known right away. Allowing the judges to discover it along the way, perhaps for the sake of not revealing our strategy, may be too late.

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Gli speciali di Quotidiano Più - Episode 2

How to demolish the opposing thesis

There aren't many ways to demolish an opposing thesis, and the worst approach is to try to denigrate, offend, belittle the opponent, or use irony. Judges rarely tolerate such behavior. The best approach is to deconstruct and break down the opposing thesis into parts, subjecting them to the test of doubt in order to find weaknesses, points of instability, and gaps. This can be done most effectively using the Socratic method, similar to what Socrates used with his opponents: simply asking questions about specific parts, aspects, or consequences of the opposing thesis to reveal doubts and weaknesses, putting its resilience to the test to the fullest extent possible. At this point, it's time to counterattack, highlighting all the weaknesses and uncertainties until the opposing thesis and its credibility are demolished. This allows the defense thesis to have a clear field.

The skill of deconstructing and reconstructing a discourse or an argument through the expert use of language (it is essential to strive for a rich vocabulary because we think with language, and the richer our language, the better we can develop structurally complex thoughts) is an important training for a lawyer or defender. Those who were accustomed to writing Latin or Greek compositions as students already know the advantages. However, it is a skill that can be learned through practice, even without knowledge of Latin or Greek. For those involved in defense, it is a highly useful and fruitful exercise.

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Gli speciali di Quotidiano Più - Episode 3

The importance of contextualizing facts and evidence

It is always challenging to overturn the perspective of the accusing party. It is challenging but essential. And not only because it shows things in a different light, or tells a different story, but because it forces judges to contextualize the facts and evidence.

I am reminded of the Parmalat case. Everyone, starting from the extraordinary administration, criticized the banks, especially the American ones, who were asked for a whopping compensation of over 100 million. Lawsuits were even filed in the United States specifically for this purpose.

I recall the investigative reports and the media campaign against the banks. Everyone was against them. It was said that they knew about Parmalat's dire financial condition but continued to lend money and keep it afloat out of greed. Well, that's an easily agreeable cliché. Who doesn't hate banks?

And what about the defrauded investors? It's a pity that the compensations requested by the "new" Parmalat were not going into their pockets but into the coffers of a company that, by decree of the Italian State, only had assets and no liabilities (which horrified the American judges).

The verdict seemed obvious, but the defense did a clever job. They changed the perspective. How? By contextualizing the facts and evidence. It's too easy to say in hindsight: "Well, we could have known that Parmalat was a sinking ship." So why didn't the regulatory authority, Consob, realize it? After all, it's their job, right?

The banks' defense demonstrated that they had been deceived, just like everyone else, because Parmalat was falsifying the financial statements from which the banks derived their information about the company's reliability. In the end, the banks had lost a significant portion of the money they had lent.

By changing the perspective, the role of the banks was precisely placed in the time and space where Parmalat's ownership and management were falsifying the financial statements to deceive the market and, primarily, the banks themselves to obtain loans.

That's what facing an accusation entails—being able to overturn the perspective and contextualize the facts and evidence.

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Gli speciali di Quotidiano Più - Episode 4

How to interpret tax laws in the tax process

Identifying the relevant facts in a dispute, recognizing their characteristics, and comparing them with those described in the abstract provisions of legal norms, performing an accurate semantic operation of these. These are the topics discussed in the fourth episode of Season 1 of the video series 'The Fundamentals of Defense Techniques in Tax Proceedings'.

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Gli speciali di Quotidiano Più - Episode 5

How to build a defensive thesis

The series "Managing Defense in Tax Proceedings" continues, available as a podcast on Spotify. In this episode, we focus on the basic techniques of identifying and gathering evidence, as well as the logical rules to be observed when selecting, organizing, and sequencing arguments to be used in constructing the defense in tax proceedings.

Gli speciali di Quotidiano Più -Episode 1

Judgment: intuition or reason?

Gli speciali di Quotidiano Più - Episode 2

How to demolish the opposing thesis

Gli speciali di Quotidiano Più - Episode 3

The importance of contextualizing facts and evidence

Gli speciali di Quotidiano Più - Episode 4

How to interpret tax laws in the tax process

Gli speciali di Quotidiano Più - Episode 5

How to build a defensive thesis

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