Where to deposit the money?

Where to put the cash: mattress, prepaid cards, post office, current accounts, secret places at home. Risks with Taxation … and with thieves.

The renewed fight against cash carried out by the last governments in an attempt to combat evasion and the news that Unicredit would like to apply negative interest rates to current accounts (ie to charge its customers for keeping money) has re-proposed an old problem when man: where to deposit the money?

Those who opt for the traditional mattress, in addition to the risk of theft at home, know that a subsequent deposit in the bank of the nest egg becomes risky: the tax authorities will want to know, with a written test, the origin of the money, which is far from easy to rebuild after a lot of time.

Bearer passbooks have a maximum limit of one thousand euros each.

All that remains is the safe deposit boxes, the Post Office, the prepaid credit cards with Iban and, for those who are more accustomed to technological tools, online and foreign banks like PayPal.

It is far from easy to establish where to deposit the money. The variables only represented by the amount of the sum, the origin of the money, the economic resources of the person concerned, the possible existence of debts, etc. Nevertheless, it is still possible to give some practical advice so that you know what you are up against.

Money in black: where to deposit them?

For the tax authorities, not only the money is "in black" tax evasion, but also those whose provenance cannot be proven with certainty. Both, in fact, serve the same purpose: they are taxed and sanctioned.

A donation from a relative made in cash, a payout on the cards or a bet between friends, the savings accumulated in the piggy bank for years: these are sums which it is difficult, if not impossible, to provide a written justification. For these, therefore, the problem arises where to deposit them.

Surely, the worst place to hide the black is the current account. With the register of current accounts, in fact, the Inland Revenue is able to detect all payments and transfers. And if there is no trace of such money in the tax declaration, the tax office is entitled to presume – unless evidence to the contrary that the tax payer must provide – that it is the result of evasion.

In truth, apart from the brick of the house, there are few places where it is possible deposit cash difficult to demonstrate. One of these is the safety deposit boxes.

Safety deposit boxes

Usually, when the money to be deposited exceeds five thousand euros, recourse is made to safety deposit boxes at the banks.

It is legal to keep cash in the safety deposit boxes, nor does this create a presumption of a tax offense. A medium-sized safe has a cost of between 50 and 200 euros per year. You can enter what you want and the content remains secret both to the bank and to the tax authorities (unless a check is made at the credit institution).

The disadvantage is that money does not generate fruit: it is not, therefore, an investment. This is an alternative to the home mattress, but ensured by the risk of robbery within the limits of the ceiling provided for in the contract.

Insurance and life insurance policies

If even the life insurance policies they are not distrained, their existence is in any case easily detectable at the Tax Office which could deem them incongruous with respect to income and make an assessment through the Redditometro. We must therefore be careful to take out policies whose premium is too high compared to the declared income.

The home mattress

When we talk about "home mattress", in reality, we refer to the many secret places that can be found within an apartment. The hiding place is more a precaution against thieves than against the Treasury. If, in fact, the Revenue Agency or the Guardia di Finanza cannot make access to homes without evidence of serious evasion tests and in any case without the authorization of the Public Prosecutor, the criminals do not have these limits.

And here is a flourishing of places to hide cash: inside an empty nail, inside a vacuum cleaner, inside a jar of medicines, inside an old shoe, the tiles, inside one or more female sanitary napkins, inside the conditioner, in a empty book, in a sub-box, inside the collection of records, inside a bathroom tile, inside photo albums, inside the bathroom drain (in a water-repellent and well-sealed casing), inside an old electric socket (which must be unscrewed first). ), in a photo holder.

But whoever deposits the money in the drawer of his house must know that he is going to meet the devaluation. Although in recent years inflation has been at historic lows, there is still a cost determined by "time": 1,000 euros become € 875 in 10 years. All in all a minimum figure. To which, however, is added the lost profit that could have been obtained with possible forms of investment, were it even one supplementary pension which, moreover, is tax deductible.

Supplementary pension

Here it is, one of the forms of deposit of money less considered by the Italians and perhaps more convenient: with a supplementary pension it is possible to set aside a nest egg when it will no longer be possible to work, with the possibility also of an early redemption. Furthermore, the contributions paid each year in your pension form allow you to reduce the taxable income for personal income tax purposes. The payments made during the year are, in fact, subtracted from the declared income before the expected progressive rate is applied, consequently there are less taxes to be paid.

The limit of deductibility amounts to well 5,164.57 euros per year. Up to this annual ceiling the contributions paid can be taken into tax deduction.

Current accounts

There are different shapes, but almost everything makes it by now very little or nothing. We have already talked about it in The hidden tax on current accounts. THE'inflation however, there remains a cost for the account holder, a sort of invisible devaluation that operates day after day. In addition to this, of course, there are the costs of account maintenance that vary depending on the type and number of transactions allowed by the contract with the bank.

Alternatively, there is the deposit account which offers the possibility of gaining relatively high interests, especially when compared to what is offered instead by the other proposals of banks and post offices.

Then there are the many online banks that at least present their customers with much lower management costs than traditional physical counters.

Is the bank account or the post office more convenient?

There are always the Italian post, a favorite place for the elderly for the pensions, perhaps for convenience given that, until some time ago, INPS checks were collected right at the post offices.

The return on a bank account it is not very different from the one proposed by a postal current account. The advantage of Poste Italiane is that of having a network of branches close to the 13 thousand units that it will be difficult to close and that the citizens attend also for other reasons: the payment of a postal bulletin, for example, makes savers remain in close contact with the Post Office .

THE postcards they then have costs much lower than those of the current account. An ordinary booklet makes 0.01% gross, from which you must remove 26% taxes on interest and another 2% stamp if the average deposit exceeds 5 thousand euros.

Treasury savings bonds

THE treasury bills they are the most basic form of investment. Their yield depends on the auction and the spread. The yield of the BTPs and the Bots is not far from being able to think that it is a speculation, but at least they allow to avoid the loss of the purchasing power of their own earnings that, instead, is suffered in the current accounts or in the postal books.

Prepaid cards with Iban

Born as a payment instrument for the Online shopping, today the prepaid cards are considered a valid alternative to the current account, especially because some of these are equipped with Iban and, therefore, allow traditional operations. Surely, they are a less flexible means of payment than the account and the risk of losing the magnetic card could jeopardize the holder's own wallet.