Befana Bonus brought forward to December: a breath of fresh air for employees with children

Among the expenses that the government aims to anticipate this year in order to lighten the accounts of the manoeuvre 2025 is the Befana bonus. The aid of 100 euro gross reserved for employees with children and incomes between 8,500 and 28,000 euro per year had been scheduled for next January (hence the name) by the Irpef-Ires legislative decree, one of the measures implementing the tax delegation. The text approved by the Council of Ministers on 30 April, however, is still entangled in the long technical whirlwind between the offices of the Ministry of the Economy and awaits the final stamping of the General Accounting Office in order to be able to reach the House and Senate commissions. The bonus, on the other hand, could speed up because the government is aiming to have it moved, in the form of an amendment, to the conversion law of the omnibus decree (Dl 113/2024) now being examined by the Senate's Budget and Finance committees, with the aim of paying it by the end of the year.

The move is currently being assessed for coverage, which, however, appears to be far from prohibitive, since, at least in its original version, the cost is limited to 100 million euro, which represents only a tiny fraction of the fiscal space opened up by this year's buoyant revenue dynamics. The obstacles posed by the timetable, on the other hand, appear to be more complex, because in order not to miss the 13th month train, a clear procedural simplification will be needed compared to the system devised in the spring, which also envisaged an implementing ministerial decree through which the request by the person concerned could also be regulated.

In the panorama of the almost 300 amendments presented by the majority to the decree dismissed by the Council of Ministers on 7 August, however, there is also a rather intense dialectic with the government. Alongside the amendments that affect the two-year preventive concordat for VAT numbers (see the article below), there is also a proposal that reopens the tensions of a few months ago between Forza Italia and the Minister for the Economy Giancarlo Giorgetti on tax discounts for footballers arriving from abroad. The amendment 7.9 presented by Dario Damiani, a member of the Italian national parliament, in fact calls for the extension until 31 December 2027 of the 50% tax deduction envisaged until 2023, after a reform carried out by the Ministry of the Economy, after a tug-of-war with Forza Italia, has in fact removed footballers from the tax benefit. The extension, therefore, would affect a rule that has already been archived, raising non-trivial technical problems and increased, moreover, by the failure to indicate any form of coverage.

The entire majority then calls for the debut of the points-based driving licence on construction sites to be postponed to 1 January 2025 in order to ensure that companies comply with safety regulations. Curiously even longer, to 1 April, is the postponement requested by the PD and the Autonomies. But from the Ministry of Labour they stop the initiative: no postponement, they say, the implementing decree is ready to enter into force on 1 October.