Donations by text message, telephone operators are not accounting agents

The Court of Auditors ruled out that phone operators, when collecting donations via SMS for the Civil Defence under the protocol with the Prime Minister's Office, are 'accounting agents' of the State; the money remains private until it is paid out and does not become public money at source.

The proof lies in the operational model: users give a private order to their operator (withdrawal from card/account/prepaid account) to transfer a predefined sum; the Civil Protection offers ex post transparency on the use of funds but does not delegate a public collection service to operators.

The stakes were high: qualifying operators as accounting agents would have imported fiscal responsibilities similar to those of licit gaming concessionaires, with exposure on unperfected donations and on any anomaly between pledging and collection. Judgment 69/2026 published on 20 April restores operational certainty in this sense and in fact encourages the continuation of the SMS channel without improper charges and risks.

The operators had in fact frozen the renewal of the protocol pending this outcome following a dispute involving all the major operators. "This ruling is important because it gives telephone operators back the serenity of being able to continue to carry out this beneficial activity without running any risk," commented Filippo Degni, a lawyer at Police & Partners, the law firm that followed Wind Tre.

The judgment opts for a civil law reconstruction of the mechanism. Sending the text message to the solidarity number is read as an act of liberality by the customer. On the contrary, the provision expressly emphasises that it is a donation of a modest value, amounting to 2 euros, which is only completed when the sum is paid to the final recipient, i.e. through the Civil Defence. Before that moment, the judges observed, the transfer allowing one to speak of public money had not yet taken place.