There are VAT payments that are monthly, only the smaller companies have quarterly due dates. There are social security deadlines: quarterly for the owner craftsman and monthly for any employees. And then the electronic invoices that have a deadline of ten days. And again the compilation of sector studies. And then again the bank maturities. Not to mention all the bureaucracy linked to suppliers and customers. To this must be added the deadlines for municipal taxes. An authentic Babel in which it is difficult to extricate oneself. «In my sector, but I know that it is not very different for other sectors – explains Alessandro Zadro, the construction craftsman from San Vito – suffice it to say that fifty documents are needed to be able to start a small construction site. We had to hire a part-time employee: almost half of his working time goes for paperwork ».
LOST DAYS
Having the construction company of Alessandro Zadro seven employees it is impossible to imagine that the owner can follow things directly. “If I had to take care of all the paperwork myself, it would take me three to four days a month. How could this be done? Too much time stolen from the work and productivity of the company ». And so, but like him, the vast majority of artisans and micro-enterprises, even with only one employee, must at least rely on the accountant. “Without which – argues the small construction contractor who is also responsible for the building category of Confartigianato Fvg – disconsolately – I believe that in Italy no one who wants to concentrate on his work can allow himself the luxury of not having”. Administrative clerks and accountants are major costs for a company. But otherwise it would be very complicated to extricate oneself from the offices of the Revenue Agency, Inps, Inail, the Territorial Agency and the Municipalities. “And despite having entrusted the bureaucratic tasks to an administrative employee, who in turn maintains relations with the institutions and with the accountant, I have not completely avoided it”. Because there are bureaucratic tasks that the business owner, for a series of knowledge and skills that only he possesses, must carry out in person. «The bureaucracy more directly linked to construction sites is difficult to delegate unless an ad hoc employee has been trained. Just think that to start a construction site, even a small one, you need something like fifty documents. From the Durc (the contribution regularity document that should have simplified, ed) to the myriad of authorizations required by the various bodies. The risk assessment document is also provided: the risks must be calculated for each processing stage. The many documents linked to each site worker ».
AT THE OFFICE
«When I have to draw up – continues the small entrepreneur – the prescribed site safety plan is not enough for me half a day given the difficulty. Time that I am in the office and not in the construction site. And then to say that all these documents must, by law, always be present on site in case of checks. But instead of a lot of paperwork, a USB stick would be enough. Yet bureaucracy, despite the fact that online has been helping in recent years, often still loves paper and not digital too much “.