The latest frontier of company benefits comes from the United States, where, according to an analysis conducted by the Wall Street Journal, it is increasingly common for employers to offer, as a means of attracting talent, so-called “fertility benefits”, i.e. a series of services to cover the expenses necessary for clinical treatments for people suffering from infertility.
This is a significant issue considering that, according to the World Health Organisation, infertility affects one in six people worldwide and that, very often, the costs of accessing such health services are extremely high.
This type of benefit does not yet appear to have arrived in Italy. The explanation probably also lies in the particularly restrictive legislation on assisted procreation in force in Italy.
From an employment law point of view, in Italy the tool available to companies to offer employees support services for health benefits is corporate welfare. This enables companies to offer employees forms of supplementary health insurance, for example, that can be provided in the form of flexible benefits, thus guaranteeing a form of additional protection and assistance compared to the Italian National Health Service.
For employees, joining these forms of company healthcare gives rise to the right to various healthcare services in affiliated centres or hospitals.
It is important to remember that from a tax and social security contributions point of view, health care contributions paid by the employer do not constitute, within certain thresholds, income from employment with consequent economic benefits for both the employer and the worker.
Therefore as fertilitybenefits fall within the scope of healthcare services they could be included as a tax free benefit within the supplementary healthcare services or offered by the company as part of a company welfare plan, within the limits set by the specific regulation or company union agreement.
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