The President’s Office of the Council of Ministers distributed the agreement scheme yesterday for a 24 month extension on various forms of income assistance, including exemption for welfare provisions. The draft, which should be signed next week during the State-Region Conference, envisages for exempt welfare provisions for this year and 2012, that the Government and Regions will allocate an endowment totalling 2.6 billion of which 1.6 from the Government and the remaining billion guaranteed by the Regions that, for that purpose, will use EU funds and the remainder of resources committed but not spent in 2009-2010.
(Source il Sole 24 Ore)
INPS, with its circular letter no. 67/2011, clarified that unemployment benefits are only incompatible with fulltime, open ended work. Resuming employment as a part-time or with short-term contract, allows remaining on the unemployment rolls and receiving the relative benefits although in a lesser amount.
(Source il Sole 24 Ore)
The main purpose of company labour agreements is to establish uniform rules which the involved employer and employees must comply with, however, using a mechanism which make it possible to adapt general type regulations to specific situations which meet the real needs of the individual companies. Company bargaining also has the job of regulating the matters it is delegated by the national contract and law, which are not already the subject matter of agreement in other bargaining levels. Therefore, in order to stimulate the stipulation of agreements, the law and national bargaining have envisaged that particular incentives (tax and social security) will be connected to the existence of de-centralised collective bargaining and have introduced elements to guarantee remuneration paid to employees of companies lacking company bargaining.
(Source il Sole 24 Ore)
In March the coefficient for revaluation of the portions of trattamento di fine rapporto accrued at 31 December 2010 was equal to 1.192576.
(Source il Sole 24 Ore)
Ten years from the enactment of Italian Legislative Decree no. 231/2001, the liability of companies for crimes committed by employees has not lost its original impetus. Adopting international conventions against corruption, the fines to companies who gain advantage or have an interest in having crimes committed by their employees have overturned one of the suppositions of our judicial system according to which an entity could not be considered the perpetrator of a crime. In addition, the original list of crimes, focussed on violations of correct relations between companies and public administration (from corruption to fraud against the State), has been supplemented with corporate or financial crimes, crimes against individuals, copyright violations, transnational crimes, money laundering, violations of the more severe laws disciplining occupational safety and, in a few days, based on proposal from the Council of Ministers, environmental crimes.
The magistracy seems to be more focussed and to a certain extent more creative in terms of these laws particularly regarding the scope of interested subjects which has been gradually extended to include sole proprietorships and non-profits.
Lastly, the Ministry of Justice is drawing near to submitting a Draft Law to amend parts of Legislative Decree no. 231/2001, the central point will be reinforcement of organisational models – which more and more companies are required to adopt – through a certification mechanism. This Draft Law also recognises for the first time, a specific nature for groups of companies and relations between parent companies and subsidiaries and envisages favourable laws for the establishment of supervisory bodies within small enterprises.
(Source il Sole 24 Ore)
With the approval by the Council of Ministers of the legislative decree which disciplines “access to early pension for those who perform particularly heavy-duty work” the notification obligations have increased for employers. In particular, the nighttime employment of workers who, continuously or within regular periodic shifts, perform their job for at least six hours and for a minimum of 78 working days per year, must be communicated each year to the local Provincial Labour Office and social security institutions. This notification – which must be sent electronically – also regards those who for the entire year work for at least three hours between midnight and five in the morning. An addition obligation requires notification to the Provincial Labour Office at the start of jobs which involve personnel assigned to assembly lines.
Failure to provide such notification shall result in a fine of 500 to 1,500 euro for the employer, reduced if paid by a certain deadline.
(Source il Sole 24 Ore)
Taxpayers who have decided to use tax assistance from their employer or pension entity have until next 2 May to submit their Mod. 730 already filled in and signed, together with a sealed envelope containing the selection sheet for 8 per mille and 5 per mille (0.8% and 0.5% allocations). The tax return in question may also be transmitted electronically. However, in this case, the withholding agent must have set up a dedicated website and given employees personal user names and passwords, as recently explained by the Agenzia delle Entrate (Tax Authority).
In addition, taxpayers who use direct tax assistance supplied by their withholding agent have the obligation of keeping the documents for this year’s tax return until 31 December 2015, the deadline within which the tax authorities may request them.
For taxpayers who have decided to use the assistance of a Caf or licensed professional (work consultant, accountant, bookkeeper or expert) the deadline for submitting the return and envelope is 31 May of this year.
(Source il Sole 24 Ore)
Last 26 February 2011 the Tertiary CCNL was renewed for distribution and Services for the period from 1 January 2011 – 31 December 2013. The agreement, which was not signed by FILCAMS-CGIL (Italian trade union for commerce, tourism and service workers), contains a series of important changes, including: (a) contribution to supplementary healthcare and pension funds; (b) paid time off; and (c) paid sick leave. In addition the renewal of the economic part of the contract is planned, with non-absorbable wage raises, starting retroactively from 1 January 2011.
Il Sole 24 Ore
The Council of Ministers with a decree law confirmed the decision made in April last year that the event of the 150th anniversary of the Unity of Italy be celebrated with a holiday. Therefore, Thursday 17 March of this year will be a holiday for all effects and purposes (as per Italian law 260/49) and anyone who has to work on that day shall receive the contractual overtime pay for a holiday. However, to ensure the “financial neutrality of the event” the economic effects, judicial and contractual institutions of the holiday of 4 November shall be transferred to 17 March, with the consequence that the cancelled Armed Forces holiday will remain a normal day and will be celebrated the following Sunday (editor’s note: 6 November).
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The deadline is 28 February for companies to deliver or send, including digitally, the CUD form to employees. The certificate is related to income paid in 2010 and related withholding, as well as sums for which social security was paid. The main new features of the 2010 income certificate primarily involve the tax abatement for bonuses, as defined by Italian Legislative Decree no. 93/08 and the management of suspended taxes for those who are resident in the areas affected by the earthquake in Abruzzo.
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By 16 February 2011 employers must pay the insurance premiums resulting from self-assessment for the 2010 balance and 2011 advance payment. Remuneration actually paid must be communicated to Inail (Italian Institute for Insurance Against Industrial Accidents), unless this is done electronically, in which case the deadline for submitting wage statements is postponed until 16 March of this year.
Artisan firms which did not employ workers in 2010 or which only employed workers with apprentice contracts, are exempt from having to submit wage statements.
Failure to submit wage statements is punished with an administrative sanction of 770 euro which can be rectified by paying the reduced amount of 250 euro.
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The information sheet for the disabled, required under Law No. 68/89, must be submitted between 15 and 31 January 2011. The submission time frame has been shortened, according to the Ministry of Labour, to offset the technical time necessary to update the software application that allows employers to complete this form online. Companies which employed at least 15 staff members at 31 December 2010 are required to complete and submit this form (companies which employed between 15 and 35 staff members are required to submit the form only if they hired a new staff member after the 15th). Decree Law No. 112/08 (converted by Law No. 133/08) has partially modified the regulations on the obligation to submit the form, giving employers the option to not resubmit the sheet if no changes have taken place since the previous year that would imply a change in the obligation to hire disabled persons.
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The permanent consulting commission on health and safety on the workplace, composed, according to article 6 of Legislative Decree 81/08, of representatives of the Ministry, the Regions and the social partners, has completed the methodological instructions for implementing the agreement on work-related stress, signed on 8 October 2004.
The Commission specified that the assessment of the stress factor must be made during the normal assessment of workplace risks. Furthermore, it also established that the assessment must be made using a methodological procedure that accounts for both the significant differences – in size, risk and organization – in various businesses and the fact that not all signs of employee stress at work can be considered stress due to work-related causes.
At this point, the final step is implementing the instructions provided by the Commission which – despite being published as a “memo” – represent an addendum to the legal regulations and are expressly cited therein.
Il Sole 24 Ore
The Ministry of Labour issued a memo on 31 January 2011, informing users that the term for submitting the disabled worker report form, originally due by 31 January, has been extended to 15 February 2011.
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By issuing its Memo No. 168/2010, INPS has specified that the new mechanism for collecting on its receivables – set forth by article 30 of Decree Law No. 78/2010 and in force since 1 January 2011 – does not eliminate the amicable notice which continues to be used by the Institute to request payment of amounts in arrears. Indeed, INPS will only draft and notify the debtor of the debit notice only if the debtor fails to pay within the stated term (generally 30 days). The debit notice is fully enforceable upon issue.
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