Tips in tourism, tax relief starts at 943 euro per worker
Caf Acli's analysis of the 730 forms photographs the first months of use of the 5 per cent substitute tax. Most workers declare less than 30 thousand euro
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The 'tax-free' tips received through their employers by employees working in tourism, including hotels, bars and restaurants, are worth an average of 943 euro. This was revealed by Caf Acli for Il Sole 24 Ore on Monday on 720 thousand 730 models of employees presented this year. It is the first snapshot of the use of the 5% tax relief introduced by the Budget Law 2023 (Law 197/2022, Article 1, paragraphs 58-62) on the amounts paid by customers.
The 5 per cent levy concerns tips collected by the employer - in cash or with electronic payment instruments - and then paid to the employee in the pay envelope. The beneficiary's employment income must not have exceeded 50,000 euro in the previous year and the subsidised amounts must not exceed 25 per cent of the income received for services rendered in the tourism-hotel and catering sector.
The facilitation route
.The relief has been in force since January 2023, while the tax code for the substitute tax was established in March and the Revenue's instructions were published at the end of August (Circular 26/E/2023). In fact, therefore, the new rule has less than a year of effective application.
The regions with the highest average amount of tax-free tips are Lombardy (EUR 1,569 per year) and Liguria (EUR 1,082). The vast majority of the workers who benefited from the bonus (88.2 per cent) have an income below 30,000 euro per year.
As for the number of beneficiaries, among the declarations analysed by Caf Acli, the line dedicated to tips is filled in in 0.33% of the models. The incidence increases in some areas: it is 2.14% in Bolzano, 0.55% in Liguria and 0.53% in Tuscany. It must be said, however, that this incidence is calculated on workers in all sectors. Relating the percentage to the total number of employees, we arrive at about 60,000 beneficiaries, which corresponds to 3.3% of the 1.8 million employees counted by the Inps in the accommodation and food services sector. Many or few? The utilisation rate does not seem high. On the other hand, for the debut year it is not such a low figure: after all, the substitute tax on productivity bonuses - which has been in place for many years - before the rate was lowered from 10 to 5 per cent had a utilisation rate of about 11 per cent of employees.
