The notary is a public official to whom the State entrusts both the task of guaranteeing the validity of contracts and various other legal transaction, and the collection of taxes for economically relevant activities and operations, such as - for example - the purchase or sale of an asset, the sale or cession of company shares, procedures relating to declarations of successions. He/She also provides legal consultation .

In Italy the function of the notaries does not only concern the legal sphere but also the fiscal one: in fact, acting as an intermediary between the private individual and the State, the notary taxes his own deeds and directly collects the taxes and duties for the deeds that he enters into for the State, making sure at the same time of the correct registration of the same in the Public Registers and of the further related obligations.
Acting as a withholding agent, he is also personally responsible for any unpaid taxes.

By virtue of their role, the notaries by law must be super partes, that is to say, they equally protect all parties involved in a negotiation.

To carry out their functions, the notaries must have a thorough and extensive legal preparation, guaranteed by passing an extremely selective public competition, managed by the Ministry of Justice.

Being the notaries public officials, they are responsible for their activities from a civil, criminal and disciplinary point of view and are subject by law to continuous checks carried out by the State: every four months they undergo checks by the Revenue Agency and every two years by the Ministry of Justice.
In addition to these checks, the one operated by the District Notarial Councils, which supervise the correct behavior of the notaries in the various reference territories.

Currently the figure of the notary is bound by law to a territorial jurisdiction. That is to say that for a notary, the limit of action within the region of competence applies, within the limits of which he or she can receive documents, even for goods or activities not relevant to the region itself.