Salary, Taxes, Pension, Benefits and Reimbursements Is the tution fee for PhD registration covered by MC fellowship? Is my scientific stay…

Any help with taxes?Hello...

by Laura Moro

1 min read Apr 20, 2016

Any help with taxes? Hello all, I am a Marie Curie experienced researcher at a company in Italy, within an Innovative Training Network. I am having troubles to understand how taxes are calculated and I am wondering if anybody can give some input. The company is deducting from my annual gross what they call "company costs" (I want to understand these are kind of taxes like social security for having an employee, etc., although there is no number or document that they can show me). This makes around 1/3 of the total annual gross from the fellowship. I receive the remaining 2/3 gross, of which I pay around 50% taxes. In summary, I receive around 1/3 of the annual gross of the MC fellowship as net salary, which is even lower than some PhDs in other countries in my network. Anybody knows if this "company costs" have to be paid from my salary or from other parts of the project budget? Anybody in Italy that can share her/his experience? Thanks for any help and best regards! Laura

5 Comments

Shikhar Aggarwal

Apr 20, 2016

Dear Laura

Your salary depends upon your type of contract with the company. If you have co.co.co or subordinato autonomo, your salary will be around Euros 2400/- and if Ricerca Scientifica (assegno di ricerca), your salary will be Euros 4900 per month (almost tax free, applicable for university researchers).

It is absurd but this is truth.

Please join this facebook group for more details: https://www.facebook.com/groups/248940635296985/

Thank you very much.

Best Regards

For MCAA-NI

Laura Moro

Apr 20, 2016

Dear Shikhar,

Thanks a lot for your reply. I have a Contratto Collettivo Nazionale di Lavoro (CCNL) Metalmeccanico, category 7. I went through it but I could not find much more details about taxes, or about this "company costs". So I do not know if I am closer to the first type of contract that you mention, but I can say that I do not arrive to the 2400...

I see how absurd the differences can be depending on the country and employer!

Thanks for your help,

Laura

Rukhe Zehra Zaidi

May 30, 2016

Hi Shikhar

Thanks for that explanation about taxes in Italy! I will be starting an experienced researcher individual fellowship in Venice soon, and although I have not been given a finally salary estimate, I have been told that given recent changes in Italian labour laws I will make under Euro 2000/month. This is considerably below my current post-doc salary in the UK. I have also been told that there is no way I can transfer the pension deductions to my UK pension, and that effectively that money is 'lost' since I will never be able to get a refund, given that I will be in Italy for two years only. Do you have any information on this? Surely this goes against the entire concept of researcher mobility within the EU.

Anyway, looking forward to any feedback you or other MC alums might have on this.

Many thanks!

Zehra

Shikhar Aggarwal

Apr 20, 2016

Dear Laura, I am talking about this salary difference in Italy itself. You have a co.co.co. contract. I have raised this question many times to NCP in capacity as Chair of MCAA-Northern Italy Chapter in various meetings. However, they informed us that the toal cost of salary is given to company and then company decides your contract and EC has no role in it. So, if company has to pay some taxes to goverenment (for example, contribution to your pension fund, social security, liability insurance, work-related health insurance at work, it ll all deduct from your total cost of salary. In addition, in italy, there is regional tax, that is different upon region to region. In torino, experience researchers in companies, earn something like this amount.

Christoph Haug

Apr 20, 2016

Just a quick reply to this question: "Anybody knows if this "company costs" have to be paid from my salary or from other parts of the project budget?"

It depends what exactly they mean by company costs. If it is contributions to pension funds, health insurance and these kinds of things, then yes, it can be paid out of your salary budget. (It doesn't have to be because the EC allows employers to pay you more than what's in the MC budget, but I guess that's not an issue for you). However, if "company costs" also means overhead costs such for various services the employer provides (e.g IT services, an office etc) then they are not allowed to take that out of your salary budget. It would not get past the EC's auditors and the employer would be in big trouble, because they agreed to the rules that the entire salary budget must be used for salary costs and only salary costs. Overhead costs are not part of that.

So in order to find out whether this is okay, you will need to insist that they show you exactly where the money is going. And you can remind them, that they cannot use a penny out of the salary budget for themselves, according to the contract with the EC. If they don't show you now, the EC will find out when they check the books in the end and they will have to pay you back the meoney that they misspent...

Hope that helps,

Christoph