Sophia Loren, who once served jail time for tax evasion, has been handed a victory by Italy’s top court in a nearly 40-year battle over back taxes.

The Rome-based Court of Cassation ruled that the 79-year-old actress and beauty icon was right when tax owed on her 1974 income had been calculated.

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 tax on 70 per cent of her taxable income.

Now the court has decided that Loren was right.

In a separate tax dispute, Loren voluntarily returned to Italy in 1982 to be jailed, serving 17 days of a 30-day sentence for tax evasion. She said then her late tax preparer had made a mistake.