Fringe benefits account for 55% of corporate welfare
The proportion of total benefits taken up by workers has more than tripled compared with 2017, partly due to tax allowances
Key points
Corporate welfare continues to prove a useful tool for supporting workers’ purchasing power and helping with family care responsibilities. It is therefore not merely a means of boosting turnover and productivity. Last year, companies with welfare schemes provided an average of one thousand euros per person to their employees for the purchase of goods and services, up from 840 euros in 2021, to 920 in 2022 and 980 in 2024. The proportion actually used by beneficiaries has also risen, from 79 per cent in 2021 to 84 per cent in 2025.
In particular, it was fringe benefits, goods and services exempt from tax and social security contributions up to defined thresholds. These include, for example, shopping vouchers and fuel vouchers. Over the past nine years, their ‘share’ of corporate welfare has risen from 16.2% in 2017 to 55.1% in 2025. In effect, it has more than tripled, partly due to favourable tax legislation. In recent years, in fact, the threshold for fringe benefits exempt from tax and social security contributions has gradually increased, reaching €1,000 for all employees and €2,000 for employees with dependent children (until 2027).
This, in a nutshell, is the picture painted by the 2026 edition of the Edenred Italia Welfare Observatory, the annual survey based on an analysis of usage patterns across 5,500 companies and 870,000 beneficiaries, presented today in Milan at the Welfare Forum event, and which Monday’s edition of *Il Sole 24 Ore* was able to preview.
Use of fringe benefits on the rise
According to the Ipsos Doxa survey – which complements the Observatory’s findings with two surveys carried out amongst 1,000 employees and 200 HR managers from companies with at least 50 staff – the number one concern for workers today is the cost of living: 41 per cent are very concerned about rising prices, and 83 per cent of the sample have cut back on at least one activity in the last year due to increased expenses.
From this perspective, fringe benefits can offer a positive solution: they are, in fact, tax-free welfare schemes (within the thresholds mentioned) and include, for example, shopping vouchers and fuel vouchers. In recent years, legislation has not only extended tax benefits but also broadened the scope of reimbursable expenses, to include those incurred by employees for household utilities, rent and interest on a mortgage for a first home.
