Nurses, so the Internal Revenue Service cracks down on 'overtime'

The personnel of the SSN, and nurses in particular, are already going through so many critical issues that there was really no need for the interpretation recently issued by the Inland Revenue Agency following a query by a Piedmontese health authority. This is Answer no. 272/E of 27 October 2025, which excludes overtime worked on call from readiness and 'electoral' overtime from the tax benefit introduced by Article 1, paragraph 354 of Law no. 207/2024.

With regard to the latter recent interpellation, the interpretation provided by the Revenue Agency, by the Agency's own admission, was particularly restrictive in that the facilitation rules are of strict interpretation and cannot be applied beyond the hypotheses expressly provided for. Without prejudice to the autonomous determinations of the Agency, it must be held that this time the interpretative rigour went beyond reason, when insisting on the reference made by the provision of the Budget Law to Article 47 of the National Collective Labour Agreement for the Health Sector. A contextualised reading of the contractual text, in fact, reveals that there are no different types of overtime work, because the only regulating clause is, precisely, Article 47. This is confirmed by what is stated in paragraph 6 of Article 44, the last sentence of which specifies that "in the event of call-out these hours are paid as overtime", referring to the regulation of Article 47 below, also because other clauses on the subject do not exist. Article 44 regulates the institute of stand-by duty and not overtime work performed in the event of call-out, for which there is a recitical reference to Article 47.

Even more controversial is the exclusion of overtime connected to electoral consultations, both because this type is never stated in the contract, and because it is indisputable that the work required to guarantee the right to vote of patients can certainly not be considered an 'ordinary work scheduling factor'. In essence, the normo-economic institution of overtime work has a uniqueness of discipline in the sense that 'overtime work' is only one and the semantic construction hypothesised by the Agency between 'ordinary' overtime work and 'overtime' overtime work appears bold, a singular oxymoron as one union commented.

Nevertheless, it seems out of context to believe that the legislator's intentions and the very rationale of the relief had intended to exclude certain forms of overtime work. What we are talking about is not the only interpretative intervention by the Revenue Agency on the subject of substitute taxes that the legislature has introduced in recent times in favour of particular categories of healthcare personnel. There are essentially two such interventions: a 15% rate on additional benefits and another 5% on overtime. There were at least eight responses concerning the two substitute taxes, all of which were substantially rational and acceptable; but this last one of 27 October is unacceptable, both for its evident lack of political sensitivity and for its demonstrated lack of knowledge of the collective agreement.