UA new IT slip-up has hit INPS, triggering yet another wave of concern among Italian families. This time the error concerns 270 thousand pensioners And their unique Certificationsor Cu. The corrections machine has already started, but the timing could not be worse as, in fact, at the height of the 730 model season. In fact, for many people, especially for those who find themselves managing the tax returns of their elderly parents, a few days of confusion and control anxiety are expected.
Single certification, the bug of municipal surcharges
The mess made by INPS can be explained in a few words: the institute took the pensions of the 270 thousand citizens involved and he regularly deducted the money allocated to the Municipality for local taxes month by month. The damage arose in the next step when the computer system he forgot to write down the amount already withheldin the dedicated space of the single certification to be sent to the tax authorities, making citizens who are not debtors.
The double request for the same money
The Revenue Agency, in fact, compiles the pre-compiled 730 forms based only on the final “receipt”. and not seeing any amount indicated for municipal taxes, the Tax computer assumed that the citizen had never paid them. As a result, it automatically entered the request to pay that amount into 730, asking the pensioner to pay a second time for a fee which had already been deducted from its source.
A simple IT error risks making 270 thousand pensioners pay the same tax twice. (Getty Images)
An oversight of a few euros that blocks the accounts
INPS immediately tried to throw water on the fire, explaining that in most cases these are microscopic figures, often lower than 12 euros, an important threshold because, by law, below this amount the tax authorities do not trigger sanctions, fines or tax bills. However, the error risks messing up the calculation of the pre-compiled form 730, that form already partially filled in by the State that many hoped to be able to accept with a simple click to put their soul at peace.
The bureaucratic drama that affects the heirs
Not only that: if, in fact, for a living pensioner the situation will be resolved with a little patience, the matter becomes decidedly more intricate for families who have recently lost a loved one. A significant part of those 270 thousand incorrect certifications in fact, it is registered in the name of deceased persons. It will therefore be up to widows, widowers and legitimate heirs to file the tax return on behalf of the deceased relative. Finding the wrong official document in your hands means having to correct the data by handconsult a Caf or an accountant, and risk blocking or slowing down the already complex succession procedures and the closing of a lifetime’s accounts. A burden that families would have gladly done without.
How to verify your data and what to do now
The good news is that INPS has already identified the problem and is sending the correct data to the Internal Revenue Service to update the systems. Therefore, who has not yet touched their pre-compiled 730 form and decides to open it in the next few days, in all likelihood you will find the situation already resolved and figures updated automatically. Whoever takes the risk has already downloaded or even forwarded the form in the very first days of the tax campaign. The advice of the experts is to return to your tax drawer on the Revenue Agency website to check if there is a new version of the single certification. If in doubt, before definitively sending the declaration, it is always better to ask your trusted advisor for verification.
The third slip of a difficult year
This mess is unfortunately not an isolated case, but is part of a trail of technical incidents that is undermining taxpayers’ peace of mind. Just two months ago, at the end of Marchan error linked to deductions for dependent family members had, on the contrary, unfairly inflated the accounts of 20 thousand pensionerswho had received up to a thousand euros more, sums that the institute is now struggling to recover. At the beginning of May, however, a wrong code in “box 718” had messed up the documents of as many as two million workers who received Naspi, the monthly unemployment benefit, or the redundancy fund, taking away the deductions and bonuses due to them and increasing the taxes in the pre-compiled 730 form.
