After much uncertainty, more uncertainty: the Lottery of receipts will not start in January 2021 as initially planned and the communication arrived on December 31.
The rumors are confirmed: the Lottery of receipts is postponed and no longer starts on January 1, 2021. Even the official portal of the Government's initiative communicates that the date initially scheduled has been skipped to give more time to merchants.
The postponement, contained in the Decree Milleproroghe 2021, meets the demands of the associations of merchants who asked for more time to adapt the cash registers to the legislation and make them compatible with the lottery. The decree has not yet been published in the Official Gazette, so much so that the portal of the Lottery of the Scontrini still mentions the "draft decree", but the decision is now made and is final even if to date there is no official start date for the Lottery.
Lottery of the Scontrini: there is the postponement, but not the date
On the portal of the lottery you can now read that "the scheme of decree thousand extensions entrusts the definition of the start date to a measure signed by the heads of the Customs and Monopolies Agency and the Revenue Agency. Those who sell will thus have a few more weeks to adapt the software of the electronic cash register and those who buy will have more opportunities to participate in the lottery".
A postponement of a few weeks, therefore, to give time to traders to adapt but also to the Agency of Monopolies and the Revenue Agency to reach an agreement since, in recent days, two possible dates have circulated: February 1 and April 1.
Lotteria degli Scontrini: does it start in February or April?
From the official communication (a few weeks) it would seem more likely that the Lottery will start in February. But to read a measure of the Revenue Agency of December 23, merchants have until March 31 to adapt the cash registers, with penalties postponed from April 1.
The two state agencies, at this point, will have to agree on what is more urgent: to start the Lottery of the Receipts or to give time to merchants, who in recent months have not had a good time at all because of the forced closures, to spend the money necessary to equip themselves with a computerized recorder in accordance with the standards and compatible with the lottery. Buying it new or having the software of the one they already have updated by a technician qualified by the Revenue Agency, which certainly does not do it for free.