Seven changes over the past decade
What is emerging is the seventh change in this area in the last ten years. A sign that, despite the widespread use of electronic money (credit cards, prepaid, debit cards), which make it possible to trace the movements of money in recent years, cash is still a leading element in terms of purchasing behavior of Italians. And politics knows this.
In 1991 the first cash limitation
In the report entitled “The use of cash in Italy between needs and habits” the Foundation for Labor Consultants recalls that since 1991 (Law Decree 143/1991), with the introduction of the first limitation measure to 20 million old lire, multiple measures have placed cash under the lens, gradually modifying the reference thresholds, and then gradually decreasing them over the last decade, passing from 12,500 euros (decree law 112/2008) to 5,000 in 2010 (dl 78/2010 ), 1,000 in 2011 (legislative decree 201/2011), going back to 3,000 with the 2016 Stability law, and then falling back to 2,000 (from 1 July 2020) and to the 1,000 expected for 1 January 2022 by the latest law Budget 2020. Now yet another change: for one year the threshold is frozen at 2 thousand euros.
The 2-stage décalage foreseen by the connected to the 2020 maneuver
The last change in the threshold, before the go-ahead to modify the Milleproroghe was given, was triggered at the beginning of last month. It was therefore recent, very recent. And it had been a squeeze. In fact, from 1 January the ceiling had dropped from 2 thousand to one thousand euros. The new stakes for cash payments had been provided for by the tax decree linked to the 2020 Budget law (law decree 124/2019, approved by the Conte-bis government). The provision had set a two-stage décalage.
The first was launched on 1 July 2020 and until 31 December 2021 it had envisaged a reduction of the threshold from 3 thousand to 2 thousand euros. The second, taken precisely with the arrival of 2022, had determined a further lowering of the roof, from 2 thousand to one thousand euros. With the new year we had returned to the level set in 2011 by the Save Italy decree and then changed in 2016. Now the “new limit”, which is then equivalent to the “old”. It will accompany the shopping habits of Italians at least for the whole year. Unless new measures are adopted in the meantime, which outline a new line.