A shop billing €30,000 buys 7.8 months of pension

Open a business in Italy rather than a professional practice — a bar, a shop, a workshop, a building trade — and INPS insures you in the artisan or trader scheme rather than the Gestione Separata. That scheme charges a contribution on a minimum income whether or not you earned it: for 2026 the minimum is €18,808, and the pension contribution computed on it is €4,513.92 at the artisan rate of 24%.3

Against that floor, the flat-tax regime offers what looks like relief. An artisan or trader on the forfettario may ask for the pension contribution to be cut by 35%.1 Roughly €1,580 a year, for a declaration filed with INPS. The sentence that grants the cut also decides what it is worth.

The other half of the sentence

Comma 77 of the 2015 stability law runs to three lines. The second grants the cut: on the flat-rate income “si applica la contribuzione dovuta ai fini previdenziali, ridotta del 35 per cento”. The third disposes of the consequence: for the crediting of that contribution, article 2, comma 29 of the 1995 pension reform applies.1

That 1995 provision gives a full twelve months of insurance to anyone who has paid at least the contribution computed on the minimum income, and then adds the clause that does the work: “in caso di contribuzione annua inferiore a detto importo, i mesi di assicurazione da accreditare sono ridotti in proporzione alla somma versata” — where the year’s contribution falls below that amount, the months to be credited are cut in proportion to the sum paid.2 The comparison is against the contribution on the statutory minimum, not against the reduced amount. Pay 65% of it and 65% of the year is credited. INPS says as much about its own service: the contribution simulator it opened to the public in July warns that the number of months credited is lower for anyone in the flat-rate scheme.4

So the discount is not a discount on the price of a pension year. It is a discount on the year.

Where the line sits

Below the minimum income the arithmetic is flat: the contribution is the one computed on €18,808 whatever you actually earned, 65% of it is paid, and 7.8 of the 12 months are credited. Above the minimum the contribution follows income, so the credited year lengthens until the reduced payment reaches the full minimum — at €28,935 of business income.6

Business income is not turnover. Under the regime, taxable income is a set percentage of the till, fixed by the activity’s group in Allegato 4, and INPS charges the contribution on that same figure.1 A builder on the 86% coefficient reaches €28,935 of income at €33,646 of billing. A shop on the 40% coefficient reaches it at €72,338 — 85% of the way to the regime’s own €85,000 ceiling.

The solid sage line is construction and real estate at 86%; the dashed one is the 67% group that holds most other trades; the dark line is the 40% group — food, drink, retail and wholesale. All three sit at 7.8 months until the flat-rate income clears €18,808, and all three reach twelve at the same income. They reach it at very different tills.

Who actually pays for it

The shape of the curve is the finding. A shop on the 40% coefficient billing €30,000 saves €1,580 on the pension contribution and is credited 7.8 months. The same shop billing €80,000 saves €2,688 and is credited all twelve.6 The larger business takes the larger cut and gives up nothing; the smaller one takes the smaller cut and gives up a third of its year.

Nothing in the drafting singles out the small shop. It falls out of the two rules meeting: a reduction expressed as a percentage of the contribution, and a crediting rule that measures the contribution against a fixed floor. Above the floor the percentage is pure saving. Below it, the floor is what you needed to clear.

The shortfall belongs to the reduction and not to the minimum income. An artisan at the same income who never asks for the cut pays the whole minimum contribution and is credited the whole year.

Leaving is permanent

Nothing about the reduced scheme is automatic: it is opted into, by a declaration filed with INPS. A business already trading files by 28 February; one that opens during the year files as soon as its registration comes through.13 Coming back out is the part worth reading twice. Renouncing restores the ordinary contribution from 1 January — and INPS states in the same paragraph that the exit is definitive, “precludendo ogni ulteriore possibilità di accesso al beneficio”: it shuts off any further access to the benefit.3 The statute says the same, in comma 82.1

So the choice can be reversed exactly once. A business that takes the cut through a thin first year and renounces later cannot ask for it again when the till thins again.

What this does not settle

Three things this cannot tell you. First, Italy’s pension is computed from the total contributions accumulated over a working life, so fewer credited months do not shrink the monthly cheque by themselves — what they delay is the count of contribution years the eligibility rules ask for. The size of that delay depends on a career this data says nothing about.

Second, the rounding. The statute reduces the months in proportion to the sum paid, and 65% of twelve is 7.8. Whether INPS then records seven months or eight is an operating detail, set out in an instruction from 2016 that the 2026 circolare refers back to and that we were not able to open.3 The proportion is what the law sets, so the proportion is what is reported here.

Third, only the 24% pension contribution is counted. Traders also owe 0.48% towards the cessation indemnity and everyone owes a flat €7.44 a year for maternity cover; the 2026 circolare does not say how the 35% reduction treats either, so neither is in any figure above.3 Neither affects the threshold, because it is a ratio of two pension contributions at the same rate — which is also why the artisan and trader rates give the identical line.

The minimum income is revalued each year with the consumer price index, so the threshold moves with it: on the 2025 minimum of €18,555 the 40% line stood at €71,365 of billing rather than €72,338.5 It is a structural feature of the two rules, not a fact about 2026.