Sophia Loren once served time in an Italian jail for tax evasion. Now Italy’s top court has handed the 79 year old legendary actress a victory in a nearly 40-year-long battle over back taxes.

A Rome-based court has ruled the actress was right when calculating tax owed on her 1974 income. Loren’s tax experts, applying one of Italy’s not-infrequent tax amnesties, calculated that she owed tax on 60 per cent of her income that year, but tax officials insisted she should have paid 70 per cent.

The top court decided that Sophia Loren was right.  She voluntarily returned to Italy in 1982 to be jailed, serving 17 days of a 30-day sentence for tax evasion. She said then her deceased tax preparer had made a mistake.