Sanitization bonus: excluding serological tests

published on 15 December 2020 | reading time approx. 2 minutes

by Skevi Licollari, Rödl & Partner Milan, and Arianna Busdraghi

The costs incurred to perform serological tests on employees to check for the presence of the Covid-19 virus and consequently protect workers do not benefit from the tax credit relating to the costs in 2020 incurred for the sanitisation and purchase of protective equipment and other devices to the extent of 60 per cent, as referred to in Article 125 of the Relaunch Decree. This is established by the Italian Agenzia delle Entrate’, i.e. the financial administration entity, with its reply to request number 510 of 2 November 2020.

The applicant company considers that the amounts used to carry out this screening are comparable to the purchase of protective equipment and other devices to ensure the health of workers and users, due to the obvious prevention and protection of employees and collaborators. In fact, the purpose of the regulation is to encourage companies to adopt measures aimed at containing and combating the spread of Covid-19.

The Agenzia does not agree that the bonus is due for expenses "incurred in 2020 for the sanitation of environments and tools used, as well as for the purchase of personal protective equipment and other devices to ensure the health of workers and users".

The measure issued by the Director of the Revenue Agency number 20/E/2020 provided the first clarifications regarding the facility in question, specifying that paragraph 2 of article 125 of the Relaunch Decree contains an illustrative, though not exhaustive, list of eligible expenses, as identified in paragraph 1.

This is, in particular:

the sanitation of environments (and the tools used);

the purchase of personal protective equipment (and other equipment to guarantee the health of workers and users).

It follows from this that the expenses incurred must in any case refer to the activities mentioned in paragraph 1. Therefore, following the reading of the regulations and the documentation of practice, the Agenzia delle Entrate believes that the expenses incurred to perform serological tests on employees, since they do not refer to the sanitisation activity, nor to the purchase of personal protective equipment and other devices to guarantee the health of workers and users, are not among those eligible for the 60 per cent tax credit.

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