Italy: How to get I600-euro emergency bonus payment

Rome: What you need to know if you’ve applied, or are planning to apply for, Italy’s 600-euro payment for the self-employed.

With many busnesses closed and people out of work due to the nationwide quarantine measures in Italy, the government announced financial relief measures, as part of its “Cura Italia” decree signed in March, including the one-off payment payment available to self-employed workers.

Freelancers and other self-employed workers, as well as seasonal workers, can apply for the 600-euro payment to help with the cost of living.

This payment is intended to help to cover lost earnings in the month of March, and can be accessed by self-employed workers with a partiva IVA (VAT number), who can prove they’ve lost some or all of their income due to the shutdown.

What are the requirements? The application must be made via the INPS (Italian social security office) website. Individuals can apply after 4pm or on weekends. Before 4pm, the site is reserved for business applications, a measure intended to help INPS manage the large number of applications.

While the decree stated that applicants must show tax records from 2018, the Italian Labour Ministry clarified on April 21st that those who registered in 2019 or even 2020 can also apply.

Applications are open to those who had an active VAT number on or before 23 February 2020.

According to the INPS application guide, applicants must have earned less than €50,000 in the most recent tax period and ether:

• closed their partita IVA between February 23rd and March 31st 2020.
• lost at least 33 percent of their income in the first quarter of 2020 (compared to that of the first quarter of 2019.)

The payment is not available to anyone who is receiving a pension or the ciizens’ income unemployment benefit.

How soon can the payments be made? The government says most of the initial payments were made by April 17th. However many applicants have reported delays and other problems with the application process.

The application process is still open in April, and is set to be extended.

The government is widely expected to increase the payments to 800 euros and extend it to cover April and May in a forthcoming decree.

At least 300 thousand applications were rejected due to having input incorrect data. However, rejected applications can now be corrected and re-submitted through the INPS website.