The special deduction for personnel costs (Super deduzione per nuove assunzioni) is a tax measure designed to promote new hires in Italy. The benefit allows companies and free-lancers to claim a higher amount of the costs for newly hired personnel with permanent labour contracts for tax purposes.
The regulation was introduced by Art. 4 of GD 216/2023 in implementation of the framework law on tax reform (Law 111/2023) and initially applied only to the reference year 2024. With the 2025 budget law (Act 207/2024), this measure was extended to the years 2025, 2026 and 2027.
The special deduction normally amounts to 20 per cent of the eligible increase in personnel costs (30 per cent for certain categories worthy of protection) and is claimed in the tax return, tax declaration. This means that the eligible increase in personnel costs is 120% (or 130%) tax-deductible (100% "normal" cost deduction + 20% or 30% special deduction).
The benefit applies to income tax (IRPEF, IRES), but not to value added tax (IRAP).
The special deduction is available to all companies and freelancers who determine their in-come according to the ordinary taxation rules, i.e. analytically. These include:
However, the following are excluded from this benefit:
The following conditions must be met simultaneously in order to claim the special deduc-tion. This is checked annually in comparison with the previous year:
The conversion of a fixed-term labour contract, employment contract into a permanent la-bour contract, employment contract is considered a new hire for the purposes of the as-sessment. However, only personnel expenses incurred from the date of conversion are rele-vant for the calculation of the special deduction.
Please note: In the case of groups of companies, the above requirements must also be checked at group level, taking into account only employees employed in Italy.
The basis for calculating the special deduction is the lower of:
Personnel costs are defined as the expenses reported in the income statement, profit and loss statement under item B.9 (wages and salaries, social security contributions, employee leaving indemnity (TFR) and other personnel costs). Costs recorded in other P&L items ( ) are not taken into account (e.g. meal vouchers, field service costs, travel expenses, etc.).
The special deduction of 20% or 30% for certain categories worthy of protection is calcu-lated from the assessment basis determined in this way.
For the recruitment of certain categories of employees deserving of greater protection, the special deduction increases by an additional 10 percentage points, i.e. to a total of 30%.
These include people with disabilities, women with at least two minor children who have been unemployed for at least six months and reside in certain regions, and young people who are eligible for certain youth employment incentives.