Age and conditions, when care is allowed as a benefit

Support health care and home care, access to specialised facilities. The needs associated with ageing are manifold. But who can really benefit from them? And under what conditions and rules? Parallel to workers' needs also the regulatory framework has evolved in line with them. The result is a complex and articulated corpus that allows employers to provide increasingly composite packages.

Let us begin with the frame of reference. Now, it is necessary to take a step back and recall that the legislator, in 2015, deemed it appropriate, following the changed social needs of workers, to revise letters f) and f-bis) of Article 51, paragraph 2 of the Consolidated Income Tax Act (Tuir) and, at the same time, to add letter f-ter with paragraph 190 of Article 1 of Law 208 of 2015 (Stability Law of 2016). It is a passage, the latter, which is important because through this new provision it has been provided that the sums and benefits paid by the employer to the generality or categories of employees for the use of care servicesto elderly or non-self-sufficient family members indicated by the Tuir do not contribute to forming employment income. The rule is clearly aimed at facilitating the management of family care burdens and, consequently, at improving the reconciliation of the employee's personal and family life needs with work needs, by means of complete de-taxation, from which follows the total non-taxability for tax purposes for both the employee and the employer, of care services for elderly or non-self-sufficient family members, also provided in the form of expense reimbursements.

The necessary condition for the tax and contribution exemption to be applicable is that the payments are directed to the generality or categories of employees. In this regard, Article 51(2) of Tuir Article 51 uses the term 'categories' several times, but without ever giving a specific definition. Given its vagueness, the only foothold are a series of ministerial interpretations that authorise the inference that the term is to be understood as meaning the generic provision of services to a homogeneous group of employees, having common characteristics, of a certain type. Consequently, any benefit granted only to well-identified employees or ad personam is excluded from the exemption scheme.

Since the rule generically refers to care services, the ratio legis underlying it cannot but be that of favouring the work-life bal of those who have care responsibilities. Since neither in the rule nor in its interpretations by the financial administration, reference is made to any exhaustive and peremptory list of services deserving the tax and contribution relief, it is believed that all personal services that support workers in the management of their elderly or non-self-sufficient family members can be included in the facilitating case. That is to say, for example, the fees and all expenses relating to RSAs and nursing homes, the expenses incurred for caregivers and nurses, for day care services of municipalities, for the delivery of meals or the transport of dependent or elderly family members.

With regard to the list of beneficiary family members, the rule provides that the beneficiaries of the services may be non-self-sufficient or elderly family members: these two conditions referred to must therefore be considered alternative and not cumulative. Until 2024, the list of family members included spouses, children, parents, siblings, in-laws, sons-in-law and daughters-in-law. However, the 2025 Stability Law changed this list, so that from January 2025, the potential beneficiary family members are the spouse, children and ascendants (parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc.) of the worker.