The Italian “holiday bonus” starts from July 1st: this is how it works for merchants and customers

The lockdown goes away, the season finally starts, and July is around the corner. From July 1st, the measures envisaged by the government to support tourism spending, or the so-called “holiday bonus“, will start and they will be valid until December 31st. Given that the demand is expected to be high, it is good not to be found unprepared in the management of this tool. On the other hand, accommodation facilities (all those with the Ateco 55 code, therefore including campsites, villages and holiday farms) are not obliged to accept it. It will be the tourist’s responsibility to ensure that he can “spend” this amount at the chosen facility.

The bonus is basically a sort of voucher that can be requested by each household with an ISEE (Equivalent Economic Situation Indicator) of less than 40,000 Euros. This bonus is reserved to Italian citizens. Households made up of one person will be entitled to € 150, two people € 300 and larger ones € 500. 80% of this figure will be recognized to the tourist in the form of a direct discount by the operator, while the remaining 20% can be used as a tax credit.

The accommodation facility, in turn, can use the amount discounted to the customer as a tax credit by using a normal F24 form starting from the next day. The important thing is that the operator can assign this credit, in whole or in part, to third parties, whether they are suppliers or not, including credit institutions and financial intermediaries. This should reduce the risk of recovering these sums too late.

If the total expenditure is less than 500 euros (or the maximum amount foreseen for the family) the discount and the deduction are commensurate with the actual expenditure, and the residual will no longer be usable. Another important thing to know, and possibly to be clarified with the customer, is that the holiday bonus can be used only if there has been no intervention or intermediation of platforms or telematic portals other than those of travel agencies and tour operators.

To obtain the voucher, the customer must have previously sent to the INPS (the Italian social secutiry institute), also through CAF (independent organizations that help the citizen in relations with the public administration), the Single Substitute Declaration (DSU) for the issue of the ISEE certificate. Through the digital identity (SPID) or the Electronic Identity Card (CIE), you can then authenticate yourself on the IO app, available for Android and iOS, and obtain your code.

As an operator, however, you will have access to a specific portal, not yet active, on which it will be possible to check in real time the validity of the bonus. Here, you will need to enter the unique code provided by the customer. The procedure therefore seems simple and straightforward. Now all that remains is to decide whether to join the initiative and hope that the whole system works regularly without outages or unwanted delays.