Major changes coming to tax visits due to illness that theINPS carries out on civil servants. Following a ruling by the Administrative Court of Lazio, the hours in which state employees will be able to receive the INPS tax visit have dropped from 7 to 4. The reason? According to the judges, the current rules are more penalizing for public employees than private ones and must therefore be modified in order to respect the principle of equality.
INPS tax visits: how it works today for public and private employees
The tax visit due to illness is nothing more than one home medical check-up aimed at verifying the actual state of illness of the employee who is absent from work. It can be prepared by the employer, the INPS or the local health authority. During the established times, workers must be found by the fiscal doctor at their home, under penalty of disciplinary sanctions, including economic ones.
Based on a decree of 2017 known as the “Madia-Poletti decree” from the names of the former ministers of the Public Administration and Labor of the Gentiloni government, the availability hours of public employees for INPS tax visits are as follows: from 9am to 13pm and from 15pm to 18pm. Seven hours in total, to which is added a repetitive lack and the possibility of receiving a home medical check-up even on holidays or rest days.
However, controls are less strict private sector employees who instead must be available for a total of four hours a day: INPS tax visits can in fact be carried out from 10am to 12pm and from 17pm to 19pm.
The ruling of the Lazio Regional Administrative Court on INPS tax visits
However, it has arrived to change the cards on the table a ruling from the TAR of Lazio following an appeal presented by the Uilpa union (public administration penitentiary police) against the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Labour. The judges partially annulled the ministerial decree, establishing that there can be no disparity between public and private workers. In fact, the sentence states that:
“The lack of harmonization of the regulation of availability time slots has led to a totally unjustified disparity in treatment between public employees and those in the private sector, considering that an event such as illness cannot be treated differently depending on the employment relationship maintained by the staff affected by it. This therefore resulted in a violation of Article 3 of the Constitution, as the principle of equality was not respected."
Furthermore, according to the TAR of Lazio, the maintenance of different availability time slots for tax visits by public and private employees:
“It is also indicative of a misuse of power. Such repeated checks, associated with a restriction of the exclusion hypotheses from the obligation to comply with them, seem rather directed at discourage the use of sick leave, in contrast with the protection established by the constitutional charter in article 32".
The prison police union that presented the appeal is satisfied: “Sometimes you have to wait several years. The Lazio Regional Administrative Court fully accepted our theses, masterfully presented by the lawyer Lorenzo Di Gaetano, the Madia-Poletti ministerial decree was cancelled, ministers of the then Gentiloni government, and also specified that given the conformative effect recognized by the sentence, in the adoption of the new decree it will not be possible not to take into account what was established with the decision in question". This sentence "establishes once again that public employees continue to be mistreated and discriminated against and that the State must be counted among the worst employers in the country", stated the secretary Gennarino De Fazio.
How INPS tax visits change after the ruling: reduced hours for state workers
It will be up to the institutions in charge to let it be known, in the next few days, what the consequences of the ruling of the judges of the Administrative Court of Lazio will be on the availability time slots for INPS tax visits for public employees. There will be a need for one new interministerial decree which will most likely "loosen the grip" on state workers, harmonizing discipline between public and private workers. Translated: both for the former and for the latter there will be four hours of availability for INPS tax visits.
