The pension of self-employed workers and the madness of Inpsexit

Flavio Bucci's death reminded me of a 1980 film by Marco Tullio Giordana entitled ''Maledetti vi amerò''. The protagonist – played by the late actor – is a former red terrorist who returns to Italy after six years of stay abroad (where he had taken refuge) and finds himself in a completely changed political and social context. His bewilderment is narrated in a scene in which Svitol (the name of the protagonist in hiding) reviews the names and words once left-wing, which in the meantime have become right-wing: and vice versa.

This is a story that does not occur – with a tragic background – only in the film, but also in many phases of real life. I realized this by attending a televised debate during which an innovative and liberating idea was presented draft law with the first signature of a member of Forza Italia (which we keep anonymous) also to protect its image, should anyone ever be interested in the content of the project and denounce its absurdity.

The draft contains ''provisions on the reform of theobligation to enroll in the separate INPS management of self-employed workers'' and consists of a couple of articles, which provide that, from 1 January 2021, workers who choose to devote themselves to self-employment and who are not yet enrolled in the separate management at INPS, they will no longer be required to do so as required by current law (Law No. 335/1995, the so-called Dini reform), even if they can still do so on a completely voluntary and non-imposed basis.

At the same time, self-employed workers already registered in the separate management and subject to the obligation to pay contributions, again starting from January XNUMXst, they can decide, if they wish, to interrupt the payment of social security contributions to which they are currently subject. They will be able to access this faculty when and if they deem it, with the only obligation to give advance notice by 30 October of the year preceding the one in which they no longer intend to proceed with the payment of the envisaged contributions.

What are the reasons for this Inpsexit? The introductory report illustrates them: “Fiscal oppression and uncertainty, such as bureaucratic uncertainty, discourage or suffocate any entrepreneurial initiative and take away a considerable share of wealth from dependent and self-employed workers, risking making even those who work poor. This excessively statist culture, aimed at raising cash, in particular on labor income, does not even spare the pension reform for self-employed workers carried out in 1995 by the Dini government (law 335/1995). Since then, in fact, self-employed workers who are not registered with other social security funds of an statutory nature are obliged to register with the separate INPS management and to pay a portion of contributions for the general invalidity and old age insurance'' which deprives them of a large part of the turnover.

The fact that a pension is guaranteed with that share of contributions is irrelevant. ''Those who opt not to enroll in the separate management or choose not to continue with the contribution - continues the report - know that they will have to manage their income with methods that it deems appropriate to guarantee its future even in old age. But the State must guarantee the sovereign citizen the freedom to access a social security system; do not impose it on those who manage their own work independently. The choice of how to use one's income, net of the obligation to fulfill fiscal duties, is instead the choice of the individual worker''.

That's exactly the case with words that reverse their meaning. Until now they had explained to us that compulsory social insurance – which later became a social security system – was a conquest of the world of work. Now we are being told that, in truth, they belong to the ordeal of bureaucratic and fiscal oppression. In 1995, the protagonists of the Dini reform realized that the labor market was transforming itself and that there was a segment – ​​almost unknown until then – which was growing (coordinated and continuous collaborations, VAT number holders: in general, the so-called para-subordinate work) and which did not have any social security protection. Thus the separate management was established at the INPS: also to ''make cash'', certainly, given that with its balance sheet surplus is, for now, a strong point of INPS. And that, for these reasons, financial coverage of which there is no trace should be provided for in the pdl. But at the same time the separate management paved the way for a category that lacked certain protections of a social security nature, which the State is required to provide directly ("The tasks set forth in this article are provided by bodies and institutions set up or integrated by the State : thus the fourth paragraph of article 38 of the Constitution''). Protection of old age (as well as the risk of disease, disability, accidents and unemployment) is a 'public good'' which the State must guarantee and which cannot be totally delegated to the worker, who may not provide adequately (moreover, the bill does not even include the obligation to adopt a different form of insurance anyway).

It is then a euphemism to write in a report to a bill: ''You wanted the bicycle, if you fall, you have to make do''. Because it is the same article 38 which recognizes a right to assistance for those who do not have the necessary means for their living needs.

We are in a country in which one expects to be compensated by the State if one makes the wrong choices in the management of one's savings; a country in which a worker – who, in addition to taxes, has also evaded contributions and who as an elderly person receives a modest pension (perhaps supplemented to a minimum at the expense of general taxation) – always finds a TV that listens to him and is scandalized by the his condition, without delaying to investigate the reasons for it.

Then , even in the anti-tax madness a minimum of logic is needed. We talk about self-employment: but which categories are we talking about? Even autonomous ''entrepreneurs'' (craftsmen, traders, farmers) have compulsory social security management by now historic. Freelancers, enrolled in an order or college, have their own funds (''privatized'', but supervised by the State) to which they are required to register. Goodness of him, the deputy who first signed the PDL, does not question the obligation to register with the separate management for '' other forms of work parasubordinate like collaborations''. Then, please, what would be the self-employed who, modern Titans, decide “to bet on their aptitudes and abilities'' so as to be left “free to decide how to use the proceeds of their work''?