A squeeze on cash payments is on the way. In fact, from 1 January the ceiling will drop from the current 2 thousand to one thousand euros. The new stakes for cash payments have been provided for by the tax decree linked to the 2020 Budget law (Conte-bis government).
The provision established a 2-stage décalage. The first, taken on 1 July 2020, recorded a reduction in the threshold from 3 thousand to 2 thousand euros. The second, which will start with the arrival of 2022, will determine a further lowering of the roof, from 2 thousand to one thousand euros. With the new year, therefore, we will return to the level set in 2011 by the Save Italy decree and then changed in 2016: it will be the ninth change in 20 years, the fifth in the last 10.
The political game
The pressure to change the threshold once again carried out by the Brothers of Italy in Parliament during the examination of the Budget law has found the wall of the government and Lega and Forza Italia, always in favor of a softer regime, have not was able to make an axis with Giorgia Meloni’s party to guarantee the balance of the majority. In one of the last talks Salvini and Berlusconi renewed their commitment to raise the spending limit.
Sanctions for those who do not accept payment with Pos
The lowering of the cash ceiling is a measure that aims to strengthen the fight against blacklisting and the cashless strategy: a road to which the squeeze approved during the parliamentary examination of the Recovery decree is looking and which provides that from 1 January 2023 Shopkeepers and professionals are required to accept debit or credit cards as forms of payment, whatever the amount.
Those who refuse will incur a fine: it will start from 30 euros, a sum to which a percentage will be added based on the value of the product or service purchased. The Recovery decree was definitively approved by the Senate on Thursday 23 December.
A 2012 provision (Law Decree 179) had already introduced, starting from 30 June 2014, the obligation, for subjects who carry out the activity of selling products and providing services, including professional ones, to accept payments made with debit cards . Subsequently, Law 208 of 2015 (Stability Law for 2016) extended the obligation for merchants and professionals to accept payments also by credit cards, as well as debit cards, except in cases of objective technical impossibility.
Maneuver, game essentially closed
There are no more margins for further changes before the arrival of the new year: the maneuver in fact has yet to be examined by the Chamber of Deputies but the text arrives in armored Montecitorio. The only solution that allows you to avoid temporary exercise.