Il Rai license fee in the bill has yet to pass from words to deeds. The practical implementation of the novelty announced by the Government a few months ago, in fact, still seems far away and there are still many factual issues to be resolved before the new Rai fee can effectively become a reality.
The decree
The first node is that of the decree of Put, which should regulate relations with electricity suppliers, and without which the rest of the bureaucratic machine cannot really get going. The decree, despite some delays along the way, would appear to be in the pipeline and a draft has already been prepared.
The ministry leaks certainty that the decree will arrive in good time and that it can solve the major critical issues, such as the risk of duplicating the fee, deriving from the fact that the old bulletin was made out to a member of the family other than the one who signed the electricity supply contract and possible duplications linked to second homes. Even the change of supplier, for Development, shouldn't create problems.
Furthermore, the decree will clarify several points: there will be no disconnection of the electricity in the event of non-payment of the fee, and in the event of partial payments, priority will be given to the balance of the amount due for electricity. The request for penalties and interest will be up to the Revenue Agency, even if the electricity suppliers will have the burden of sending the reminders.
A still current problem seems to be that relating to those who do not yet have a TV, because the methods for self-certification have not yet been disclosed.
Resident Population Registry and Revenue Agency
If a discreet optimism transpires on the front of the decree, a very serious obstacle, however, is that of theSingle Register of the Resident Population, one of the pillars of the organization that will have to lead to the Rai license fee in the bill.
In fact, the municipalities will have to send theInland Revenue the data relating to registered families, since the fee is due only once in relation to all the residences and dwellings of the registered family, which is the set of people linked by marriage, kinship, affinity, adoption, or by emotional ties, cohabitants and those with occasional residence in the same municipality.
According to plan, everything should have been ready for the first installment of the rent in the bill, scheduled for the month of July, but the technical times seem to be different: the data of the 8 Italian municipalities will flow into the Anpr at the end of 2016, if everything is alright. In any case, data migration to the new centralized database will only take place in the second half of 2016.
A problem that threatens to throw the entire collection system into a tailspin, causing the concrete risk, this time yes, of duplication of payment requests, a problem that would trigger a flurry of disputes, dragging the entire operation into a vicious circle from which it would be hard to get out. To avoid messes, it will therefore be the individual municipalities that will have to work overtime, assuming the role of interface with the Revenue.
Assoelectric
Another problematic front is the one that has opened up with Assoelettrica, the National Association of Electricity Companies. In recent weeks, the president of the Chicco Testa association had been very explicit in denouncing "the risk of arriving unprepared for the next July 1 deadline", given the delays in the measures by Mise and the Revenue Agency.
A delay that cannot fail to reverberate on the electricity companies, which "have to set up the necessary IT systems to issue the new modified invoices, it is necessary to cross-reference the databases, it is necessary to clarify a long series of problems that have not yet been resolved, from the question of the delayed payments, to arrears, from the possibility of a change of supplier to partial payments, from complaints to non-resident contracts”.
After all, Assoelettrica had always been very skeptical about a provision which would have, for the electricity companies, only involved charges and not honors, in the form of money, because that would have been destined for Rai. In fact, the issue of reimbursements to utilities for the costs of the procedures on the fee in the bill remains open: "It will be necessary - declared Testa - to find a form because undoubtedly we have the costs".
In any case, since last October, when the news was announced by the Government, to date the process that should have led to the Rai license fee in the bill has progressed more slowly than expected, and the risk of reaching the July deadline with still many to dissolve for its functioning, appears increasingly concrete.
