Perhaps it is worth recalling that the severance indemnity was introduced to replace the seniority indemnity with the law of 29 May 1982 N. 297. The seniority indemnity was recognized upon termination of the employment relationship in the amount of one month's salary for each year of company seniority (one and a half months' salary was even recognized for managers).
The worker therefore accumulated a considerable amount which benefited from the significant salary evolution due to professional growth and salary dynamics, strongly linked to annual inflation whose dynamics in those years traveled in the double digits. Since the system was no longer sustainable in terms of costs and further "engine of inflationary growth", the seniority allowance was replaced by the severance pay.
With the new legislation, severance indemnities assume the characteristic, to all intents and purposes, of deferred remuneration calculated on the salary for each individual year, no longer on the last year of work, re-evaluated with a mechanism that favors the worker in the event that inflation is below 6% and, on the other hand, contains the cost of the company in the event that inflation is above 6% and with different contribution and tax treatment compared to current remuneration.
Subsequently the debate moved on the use of this provision from self-financing for the company to the possibility of early use by the worker in particular cases provided for by law or collective agreements, to financing pension funds.
Since the early 90s, the subject of supplementary pension schemes had found specific regulatory discipline, but only with the legislative decree number 252 of 5 December 2005 and with the subsequent Finance Law 2007 (law 27 December 2006 n. 296) the reference framework on supplementary pension scheme and on the use of the severance indemnity was completed.
The legislative decree mentioned above (and the subsequent implementing decrees) defined the methods for allocating the accruing severance indemnities, with effect from 2007 January XNUMX; the severance pay was automatically diverted to the supplementary pension funds or, in the absence of this, to the INPS, with the exception of the severance pay due to the employees of small businesses who could choose to leave it with the company or pay it to the pension funds.
It follows that the severance pay has been the subject of interpretations/mediations with different purposes: “Strengthening the national pension system which was becoming increasingly penalizing, especially for young people, but avoiding penalizing small businesses. All this obviously creating a strong differentiation between workers and their pension expectations”.
Since this is a deferred salary, the worker's will on his own use is strongly conditioned by the choices of pension policy or attention to the self-financing of small businesses, while any reasoning should start from the assumption that it is a question of the worker's competences/dues and as such it should be the worker (and not the trade union) who exercises the option to use a portion of the salary for which he is responsible, however making him responsible that the early use of the severance indemnity precludes him the possibility of being able to create a supplementary pension system to that and therefore he will have to take into account a significant reduction in his income at the time of accessing the pension.
To insert the amount of the severance indemnity in the pay slip transforming it into direct remuneration for all intents and purposes involves a more onerous tax treatment for the worker and a more expensive tax liability for the company.
Maintaining the current tax and social security treatment for severance indemnities but disbursing it on a monthly basis entails a very onerous administrative burden for companies, as the tax treatment must be systematically updated according to the average rates received and the worker risks never knowing what his treatment would be net, as the current legislation provides that the average personal income tax rate of the previous two years and not the current one, which is certainly higher, is applied to the severance indemnity from a fiscal point of view.
