The Ministry of Labor and Social Policies (Interpellation 5 February 2025, n. 2) has confirmed that the social security relief provided in Article 1, paragraphs 180 to 182, of the Budget Law 2024 (Law no. 213/2023) can be extended to working mothers of three or more children with indefinite term intermittent employment contracts. This was stated in response to an interpellation advanced by the National Association for Industry and Tertiary (ANPIT).
Article 1 of Law no. 213/2023, in the paragraphs 180 and 181, provides for a complete exemption from the contribution quota of working mothers with three or more children, excluding domestic work, until the child’s eighteenth birthday (up to a maximum of 3,000 euros per year), proportionally calculated monthly. The same provision is experimentally applied in 2024 for working mothers with two children until the younger child’s tenth birthday.
The benefit concerns only the employee’s quota, aiming to prevent working mothers from leaving the job market due to financial strains. They receive higher net salaries due to the exemption from the INPS (Italian Social Security Institute) contribution rate. This measure is not designed to promote job stability, but rather to support the income of families with minors, providing no specific advantage to employers.
This is similar to the provision included in Article 1, paragraph 137, of the 2022 Budget Law (Law no. 234/2021), allowing a 50% exemption from the social security contributions paid by working mothers in the private sector. This provision had been applied to all types of work, including intermittent work (INPS circular n. 102/2023).
Thus, the Ministry sees no obstructions to applying the same interpretative criterion to the relief from contributions from the 2024 Budget Law (Article 1, paragraphs 180 to 182), which defines the scope of application, but only explicitly excludes domestic work from its benefit.
Therefore, considering the absence of any express exclusion of intermittent work, and the specific aim to support working mothers’ income – a need that is even more evident for workers in a position of higher vulnerability due to flexible contracts – the Ministry agrees with an extensive interpretation of the forementioned provision; hence, the social security contribution relief can be accorded to working mothers with indefinite term intermittent work contracts.
