Workers' housing plan, fringe benefit hypothesis for employees' rents

The 'Piano casa' requested by Confindustria to encourage the hiring of those who move to find work could already be included in the manoeuvre. It was president Emanuele Orsini who made this proposal to the government because many companies, given the scarcity of local labour, complain that it is difficult to find workers in other areas, precisely because they cannot afford the cost of renting a house. Orsini, who had already obtained an inter-ministerial table on the issue, has already met with Ministers Giorgetti and Urso.

"We have to be attractive both to workers who move from one part of our Italian cities to another but also to be able to attract foreign workers," the industrialists' number one had said in recent days. The proposal for a housing plan 'we are not presenting it because it is a need of ours, we have a need to safeguard the country's industries by obviously doing a welfare piece'.

The government is working on a 'home plan' to help - as requested by Confindustria - employees who have to move residence and have difficulty in finding houses to rent at subsidised rents, Adolfo Urso, the Italian Minister for the Made in Italy, confirmed to Corriere della Sera. The intervention,' Urso explained, 'could already arrive in the manoeuvre and will take place in two stages.

"The first is transitional in order to provide fiscal support to those who need to move and rent a house; the second is structural in order to encourage the construction of workers' housing by companies, making state property areas available and simplifying procedures".

Among the hypotheses is also that of providing a 'fringe benefit' for rent incurred by workers (already with the 2024 budget law, among the expense items that companies can reimburse workers is rent up to a ceiling of EUR 2,000 tax-free). In the manoeuvre, this item could be addressed, or - at the same time or alternatively - an ad hoc relief could be introduced for companies that provide housing for workers who have to change residence.