Citizenship income, how many are really the "crafty"

Citizenship income

The media campaign against basic income has often exaggerated the numbers relating to fraud and scams. With a consequent delegitimization also of the controls of the National Social Security Institute (INPS). On the contrary, the INPS checks have blocked and revoked about 3 million requests, practically double the annual total of beneficiaries and about 100 times more than those reported for fraud following the checks by the Finance Police, which represent among the 1.6 and 1.8% of the total.

Who will lose their basic income from 2023 A simulation by the parliamentary budget office based on INPS data sheds light on which citizens will lose their basic income after the maneuver by the Meloni government

Salvini's "complaint"

Among the numbers that caused a scandal to cry are the famous 15 billion euros in fraud against the state, reported in 2021 by Matteo Salvini, secretary of the Lega, as linked to the basic income. In reality, this figure, as reported by Corriere della Sera, is linked to the total damage to the tax authorities, discovered by the Guardia di Finanza between 2020 and 2021, of which only 1% was linked to income, while the rest concerned scams linked to public tenders or other assistance mechanisms.

According to INPS and Guardia di Finanza data, of the 8.3 billion euros used each year in 2021 and 2022 to support families in difficulty with the income of citizenship, only 1.4% was illegally obtained. Reporting the data on the number of recipients, out of almost 2 million people who have obtained support, only 29 thousand have been reported for fraud, a figure that corresponds to approximately 1.6 and 1.8%. Percentages which, as Pagella politica points out, correspond to the data relating to the checks carried out throughout 2020 by the carabinieri.

Citizenship income and the false enemy of young people who don't study Education Minister Valditara provides figures that mean little and threatens to remove support for those who interrupt their education. Right, but not in the way the Northern League thinks.

Controls

To ensure this result, INPS implemented various controls from the first days of the measure's activation, which were then intensified and made automatic with the evolution of the measure. The control system is based on preventive and centralized actions, which concern the existence of the requisites for accessing the income, then supported by checks carried out by the local INPS offices, which take place at a later time, to ascertain the truthfulness of the declarations.

In particular, Inps has identified some predefined risk scenarios, which are immediately evaluated by cross-referencing the information present in the income applications and contained in the Single Substitute Declarations, with the data and information present in the Inps archives. The main risk scenarios concern the "lack of the residence requirement in Italy, false or omitted declarations regarding the working position of the members of the family nucleus and false declarations regarding the composition of the family nucleus" .

When INPS systems reveal applications that present the indicators just mentioned, these are automatically rejected, or suspended in case further investigations are necessary, for example if the data is not sufficient, always in advance of the payment of the income.Only these three scenarios allowed the Institute to block over 290,000 applications at risk out of a total of 1,290,000 received in 2022. In total, between 2019 and 2022, INPS rejected 1,735,000 applications, canceled 871,000 and revoked 213 thousand .

Furthermore, in the last year, Inps has also taken steps to include another risk scenario within the mechanisms of i automatic control, which concerns the possible ownership of "companies and/or qualifications/corporate offices by the members of the family unit requesting the benefit". According to the Institute, although this circumstance is incompatible with income, it is "symptomatic of potential fraud connected" to the measure, or "to irregularities concerning the company sector, such as, for example, those of nominees in the ownership of the same".