Construction Subcontracting — Italy: DURC and Labor Cost Adequacy (Congruità) (Odoo Online)

What this module does not do, and why

It withholds nothing from the payment, because Italy no longer withholds. Commi 28, 28-bis and 28-ter of Article 35 of DL 223/2006 — which established joint and several liability and its withholding mechanism — were repealed by Legislative Decree No. 175 of November 21, 2014. What replaced them is not a withholding but a check coupled with a suspension. The withholding rate therefore remains at zero, and there is no setting to change it.

The three rules that block a payment

1. The DURC must cover the payment date. Its validity is set out in writing: “Il Documento di cui al comma 1 ha validità di 120 giorni dalla data effettuazione della verifica” — article 7, comma 2 of the Ministerial Decree of January 30, 2015. Watch the starting point: it is one hundred twenty days from the date on which the check was carried out, not from the date of the request.

The module also refuses to flag a DURC as non-compliant when the discrepancy is at or below the threshold: “non si considera grave lo scostamento […] che risulti pari o inferiore ad € 150,00 comprensivi di eventuali accessori di legge” (art. 3 comma 3). The threshold is assessed per fund — INPS, INAIL and Cassa Edile separately — including ancillary charges. Flagging a €120 discrepancy as non-compliant could block payments, withhold a final balance, perhaps even get a company listed in the BNI: all for a discrepancy the text expressly describes as not serious.

2. The final balance is not paid without a certificate of congruity. Depending on its nature, a building project has a minimum labor incidence on its value. If the hours declared to the Cassa Edile fall below this threshold, someone has worked without being declared, and the Cassa refuses the certificate. For public works, it is requested at the last progress statement “prima di procedere al saldo finale dei lavori”; for private works, it “deve essere dimostrata prima dell'erogazione del saldo finale da parte del committente” (art. 4, commi 2 and 3 of DM 143 of June 25, 2021).

The module identifies the final payment on its own — the payment that brings the cumulative total up to the contract amount — and blocks it until the certificate has been issued. Progress payments go through: the decree does not make them conditional.

3. Above €200,000 per year in labor-intensive work, proof that withholdings have been paid is required. Article 17-bis of D.Lgs. 241/1997 requires the principal to receive, within five business days after the payment due date, copies of the deleghe F24 and the named list of workers. Failing that, it “deve sospendere” the payment — this is an obligation, not an option — up to 20% of the value of the work or the amount of unpaid withholdings, and must notify the Agenzia delle Entrate within ninety days. The subcontractor is released from this by providing the DURF, valid for four months.

The threshold is “superiore a euro 200.000”: strictly greater than. A contract worth exactly €200,000 per year is out of scope, and the module does not bring it in. The other two conditions cannot be deduced from an amount — labor-intensive work, at the client's premises, using the client's resources — and the module asks for them explicitly rather than inventing them.

The Italian register: congruity, and how it is calculated

The module keeps the congruity certificate per project: category, project value, labor cost reported to the Cassa, actual labor ratio, gap to the minimum ratio, and the amount to be regularized. It follows the full cycle — prepared, requested, certified or non-congruent, regularized — with the fifteen-day deadline and listing in the Banca Nazionale delle Imprese Irregolari.

The 5% tolerance is not automatic, and the module does not grant it for free. The text says “scostamento […] pari o inferiore al 5% della percentuale di incidenza della manodopera”, and adds a condition that many summaries leave out: the Cassa only issues the certificate “previa idonea dichiarazione del direttore dei lavori che giustifichi tale scostamento” (art. 5 paragraph 4). Without that declaration on record, the tolerated deviation is not tolerated.

What the module does not claim to know

• The seventeen percentages ship as editable data, not hard-coded. Article 3, paragraph 5 of the decree provides that they be “periodicamente aggiornati”; no updating decree has been found, either in the pubblicità legale section of lavoro.gov.it or in the CNCE news feed from 2021 to 2026. That does not prove none exists. The caveat is stated on each category's record.

• No automatic DURC lookup is wired in. A private client is not among those listed in Article 1 of the decree of January 30, 2015: it can query the database only with a written delegation from the company, or through a consulente del lavoro (Art. 6, paragraph 2). Promising automation would be promising what the law does not allow.

Calendar alert, written so it does not get forgotten

Article 17-bis of D.Lgs. 241/1997 is repealed by the Testo Unico versamenti e riscossione (D.Lgs. 33/2025) and carried over unchanged into its article 7 — same €200,000, same five days, same 20%, same four-month validity. The initial effective date of January 1, 2026 was postponed to January 1, 2027 by article 4, comma 4 of DL 200/2025. The values do not change; only the article references will need to switch. Caveat: Normattiva's consolidated view already shows the article as repealed even though the repeal is deferred — a display inconsistency, not a substantive one, but to be rechecked at the end of 2026.

Sources

DM Lavoro 30 gennaio 2015 (Gazzetta Ufficiale no. 125 of June 1, 2015, editorial code 15A04239); DM 143 of June 25, 2021 — official PDF from lavoro.gov.it, pubblicità legale section, registered with the Corte dei conti on July 12, 2021 under no. 2105, the full text never having been published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale; art. 8 comma 10-bis of DL 76/2020; art. 29 of D.Lgs. 276/2003; art. 17-bis of D.Lgs. 241/1997; art. 119 of D.Lgs. 36/2023. Consulted on September 14, 2026.