The Ministry of Labor opens up the possibility of combining contributions paid into different social security schemes, overcoming a historical ban. Thousands of self-employed workers and collaborators will be able to build a unique pension. Costs, limits and advantages
Have you worked for years jumping between different contracts? A period as an “atypical” self-employed person, then a collaborator, then a professional with Cassa for example? Today you could be much closer to pension than I thought. The news comes from the Ministry of Labour, which has opened up the reunification between the separate INPS management and other social security management, overcoming a ban which for years has “isolated” this management from the others. It’s not a technicality but for thousands of workers this means something simple and powerful: being able to truly combine all contributions into a single management, choosing the most convenient one in terms of retirement age, calculation method and value of the future pension. No more dispersed contributions, no more periods that “don’t count” or that force partial and ungenerous pensions. It is a small revolution, awaited for years and already welcomed by professionals and funders. And which will become operational in the next few days with a circular from INPS.
Pensions and separate management: what changes
The separate INPS management, introduced in 1996 and entirely contributory, had been excluded from the reunification for years. The issue was above all technical-legal: the transfer of contributions prior to 1996, typical of professional funds and more traditional INPS management, was considered incompatible with the pure contribution system of separate management. The result was a “wall” that forced those who had careers discontinuously distributed between a fund and the separate management to only use tools such as accumulation, totalization or calculation. Useful tools, but incapable of truly transferring the contributions, and often penalizing in the final calculation.
The ministry’s note reverses the perspective: the Italian social security system has now almost completed the transition to contributory and there is no longer a real reason to keep the separate management outside the scope of the reunification. From now on, contributions will therefore be able to move in both directions: from the “old” INPS or from the funds to the separate management and from the separate management towards other social security institutions.
A change that will involve both freelancers and coordinated and continuous collaborators, with the exclusion of direct pension holders only.
Social security reunification: costs, limits and possible advantages
Reunification (materially combining the contributions into a single institution that pays the pension according to its own rules) becomes an option to be evaluated, together with those that remain operational, i.e. cumulation (the different management contributions are added together without transferring them, thus maintaining different rules for each institution) and totalization (the periods are combined for a single pension, often with less favorable rules on age and calculation).
Combining contributions is the choice for those who wish to build a single social security position with the institution deemed most convenient, taking into account the leaving age, the calculation method and the revaluations. For professionals, often forced into discontinuous careers, this openness means above all avoiding the risk that years of contributions remain “parked”, unable on their own to produce an independent pension. Now, however, it may become possible to concentrate one’s entire contribution history in a single management, with a direct impact on the value of the future pension.
Of course the operation will have a cost: INPS will define the criteria for calculating the burden. Furthermore, the possibility is granted only to workers entirely in the contributory systemi.e. to those who started paying on 1 January 1996 or who chose to voluntarily join the pure contributory scheme.
There remain some issues to be resolved: the treatment of coinciding periods for those who pay reduced rates, the regulation of pre-1996 contributions transferred to the separate management, the rules for professionals who have already used cumulation or aggregation. But the direction is now clear.
