Sports Collaboration Contract in Italy: Rules, Pay and Tax

Decree 36/2021 reorganized sports work in Italy, giving amateur sports clubs — ASDs and SSDs, the two legal forms they take — a tool built for anyone who coaches, instructs or referees: the sports collaboration contract. One thing needs to be clear before going further: this is not a single contract type but a framework that can turn into either self-employment or employee status, depending on how the relationship actually works.

Requirements of the sports co.co.co

Decree 36/2021 presumes a contract is a co.co.co when three conditions line up: the work keeps going week after week, it stays under 24 hours once competition time is set aside, and it follows directions issued by a sports federation. That presumption can be rebutted. A club or a worker able to show that the real arrangement works differently — for example, duties carried out on a fixed schedule set by someone else — is free to prove it.

Practical example: a swimming instructor who coaches 12 hours a week at an SSD, following the federation’s technical program, falls within the co.co.co presumption. If she instead worked 30 hours a week on a fixed schedule set by the club, the presumption would not apply and the relationship would need to be assessed on its own facts.

A sports worker on a co.co.co has no fixed schedule: they can choose when to train or coach, while still coordinating technically under their federation’s rules. That is one of the traits separating this arrangement from employee status, where the employer sets the hours.

Not everyone working in a sports setting falls into this category. Doctors, physiotherapists and other professionals qualified outside sport are excluded, even when they work for an ASD during training sessions or competitions: their professional qualification comes from a field that has nothing to do with sport.

The relationship, and how it differs from a generic co.co.co

The sports collaboration contract shares its legal basis, Article 409 of the civil procedure code, with the generic co.co.co, but the two are not the same thing: the sports version carries its own thresholds — the 24 hours, the 15,000-euro tax limit, the 5,000-euro contribution limit — that an ordinary co.co.co does not have. Someone working for an ASD on technical sports duties follows the rules in this Recap; someone collaborating with any other organization on different duties follows the general rules instead.

Within a single ASD, though, different roles that look alike can easily get mixed up. The administrative co.co.co — someone running the office or the accounts, for instance — has its own legal basis in Article 37 of Decree 36/2021 and does not get the 24-hour presumption of self-employment, which is reserved for the technical sports worker. Two people at the same club can end up under two different classifications even if their contracts look similar on paper.

Pay, tax and the INPS Gestione separata

Under Circular 7/E of 2026 from Agenzia delle Entrate, amateur sports pay stays tax-free up to 15,000 euros in 2026, and that limit covers self-employed work, a co.co.co or even employee status alike. What decides the threshold is the pay received that year, whatever contract covers it. Above that level, ordinary tax rules for employee income take over.

Volunteers are a different role from the co.co.co sports worker, and their flat-rate expense refunds of up to 400 euros a month still count toward the 15,000-euro threshold alongside sports pay, even though that money is formally a refund.

Once the contract is signed, a co.co.co sports worker has to register personally with INPS’s Gestione separata scheme through the institute’s online portal, according to the Ministry of Labour’s FAQ, last updated March 19, 2024. Below 15,000 euros a year in pay, a traditional payslip is not required: obligations can instead run through the national register of amateur sports activities, known as RASD. Above that threshold, ordinary payroll procedures apply.

Social security contributions

Social security contributions apply only to the share of pay above 5,000 euros a year — a deductible allowance, not a cliff that makes the whole amount taxable once crossed — under INPS Circular no. 88 of 2023. That threshold is calculated by adding up pay received from every ASD and SSD the worker collaborates with in the same year. Someone working for three different clubs adds up all three amounts before checking whether the limit has been crossed.

Practical example: a coach who earns 3,000 euros from one ASD and 2,500 euros from another in the same year goes over the 5,000-euro combined limit, even though neither amount on its own reaches that figure: contributions apply only to the 500 euros above the threshold, not to the full 5,500 euros.

The IVS contribution rate is 24% for a worker who already has other pension coverage, or 25% plus 2.03% for maternity, sickness and DIS-COLL cover (27.03% total) for one who does not. Two-thirds of the contribution is paid by the ASD or SSD, one-third by the sports worker. Someone already covered by mandatory pension insurance elsewhere, or already retired, still pays the 24% IVS contribution; the welfare portion is not required in that case.

A transitional relief applies until December 31, 2027: pension contributions are calculated on only half the taxable pay. That choice carries forward, too — anyone who relies on this period ends up with a smaller pension slice for those years, since fewer contributions went in.

Roles that are not the sports collaboration contract

Two situations are often mistaken for the amateur sports collaboration contract, but follow different rules. Someone employed at a private gym or a commercial sports facility is not a sports collaborator at an ASD or SSD: their classification follows the gym and sports facility collective agreement, the sector’s collective agreement, which covers employees at venues that are often run on a different, for-profit basis. Likewise, a sports sponsorship agreement is not an employment contract: it governs a commercial relationship between a sponsor and a club or athlete, built on marketing logic that has nothing to do with a VAT registration or the INPS Gestione separata scheme described above.

The third sector also crosses paths with ASDs often, but it is a classification of the organization itself, separate from the contract of the people who work there.