Il sindacato di inerenza e la sua dimensione qualitativa (nota all’ordinanza della Corte di Cassazione, Sezione Tributaria, dell’11 gennaio 2018, n. 450)

The "Corte of Cassazione” (Supreme Court of Cassation), with the ordinance n. 450 of January 11th 2018, has again touched upon the nature of the "inherency principle” in the field of deductible expenses for corporate income tax calculation. In the first place, overruling the existing case law, it has excluded that the inherency principle could be identified with article 109, paragraph 5 of the d.p.r. n. 917 of December 22 1986, which refers to the different principle of the loss of deduction for expenses connected to exempted income. Secondly, it has underlined how inherency could not be characterized as the potential of expenses to produce a benefit for the business, and neither could be identified with their uneconomical or incongruous character, as it constitutes a qualitative judgment and not a quantitative one, as was instead claimed by part of past case law. Hence, it has affirmed the principle that inherency constitutes a judgment of relatability between expenses and business activities.