Please sign in to post.

Trenitalia - Tax code / VAT required to sign-up for the CartaFRECCIA loyalty card

Curious to know if any non-Italians have applied for the CartaFRECCIA loyalty card for Trenitalia. Applying online requires an address in Italy where you can receive the loyalty card in the mail (done - I have someone who can receive mail for me). It also requires a "Tax code / VAT" which is the tax number that all Italians born in Italy have ...similar to U.S. social security number. Many online sites require this.

I'm not sure if Trenitalia only wants to provide loyalty cards to people born in Italy or if this is an oversight. Many museums used to require this same Tax code / VAT (Uffizi and others) for online ordering but have since updated their websites to no longer require it. None of the U.S. airlines that I'm aware of require passengers to be U.S. citizens in order to take advantage of frequent flier loyalty programs. Interestingly, the privately-run Italo doesn't require a Tax code / VAT to participate in their loyalty program. Yet another reason why travelers are opting to travel on Italo vs. Trenitalia. Unfortunately, Italo doesn't yet have routes to/from all the destinations I'll be traveling to.

Here's where Trenitalia describes their loyalty program. No where do they say that you must be an Italian citizen in order to participate:

"Application for registration to CartaFRECCIA
To apply for free enrollment to CartaFRECCIA, enter your details here.
Take a few minutes to complete the registration and immediately begin to enjoy all the benefits.
In addition of giving you a chance to participate at Trenitalia premium operations, CartaFRECCIA will let you use the services of the site Trenitalia.com and access to exclusive promotions.
News 2015: CartaFRECCIA is also a rechargeable¹ prepaid card, you can activate as soon as you will be delivered.
*
Activating payment functions and using CartaFRECCIA for your daily purchases, in Italy and abroad, in the enabled stores, you will have a chance to earn points CartaFRECCIA even faster.**
CartaFRECCIA is free! Registration through this site is reserved for those who have legal age and indicates a domicile in Italy, where they can receive correspondence. Children under 18 may apply to the ticket offices of Trenitalia.*

I did some Internet searching and found this interesting article (below) on how you can create an "unofficial" Italian tax code in order to do transactions online even if you aren't Italian. I don't want to get in any legal hot water here. Is this ok to do for the reason I described above?

How To Create an Italian tax code – Codice Fiscale

"The codice fiscale or Italian tax code which some Italian shopping and travel web sites require before certain operations can be carried out has caused a number of readers problems when they want to pay fines, buy tickets to museums in Florence, Venice and Rome and shop online in Italy.

Online stores or online ticket sales services based in Italy may request an Italian tax code before any purchase can be made. No codice fiscale, no ticket for an interesting attraction, or no interesting wine from a producer in Italy."

Posted by
15682 posts

Personally? I wouldn't touch it. Even the author of the tax-code article very, very carefully won't call his DOY method "legal."

"What does this mean to anyone creating a codice fiscale to shop on Italian websites? Well, by creating a codice fiscale, they are probably not (but I need to ask lawyers about this and will do) breaking any Italian laws because they are a) not Italian and b) not resident in Italy."

He evidently did not ask a lawyer.

"...the code you create with this system is not official"

So it's a fake. I would call that illegal?

"My questions is I am going to Rome for a few days holiday with my girlfriend and we fancy taking in a football match. Do you think I would be ok to generate a tax code to purchase the tickets and send them to the address where we are staying?"

"Because I don’t want to get myself in trouble with Italy’s authorities, I can’t say yes, even if I would do if I thought I could. I suspect you’ll catch my drift."

"If I use the unoficial code only to buy train or museums tickets in sites, being a tourist, I will not have any problems with the local police, won’t I?"

"It’s an unofficial code – as has been stated countless times – so if you are caught then you could, in theory, have problems. Not that I’ve ever heard of anyone having problems, but that’s not to say it has not happened. Up to you. Use this information at your own risk".

And so on and so forth. Let's just say that I can only imagine what sort of trouble one could get into creating their own S.S. number (illegal for sure) and I like my trips to Italy well enough not to think about putting those at risk. It just doesn't smell right, and I feel would like I'm cheating my Italian hosts who pay Italian taxes. Ethical thing...

Posted by
38 posts

Thank you Kathy for your very detailed and thoughtful reply back. Just after posting this I decided NOT to do this. I was thinking before I received your reply to just delete this post because I think it's too precarious. I may still delete the post but maybe it may help someone else who has the same question.

Posted by
16893 posts

How many Frecce trains are you really planning to take, if you're not living there? Good discounts are already offered for advance purchase of single tickets and without that, a typical full/base fare to connect city pairs such as Venice-Florence, Florence-Rome, or Rome-Naples is 45 euros in standard class.

Posted by
15682 posts

I'll backtrack slightly as I did a little more digging and, lo and behold, found a mention on a 2016 Rick Steves forum thread about creating this code. See Laurel's reply at the bottom:

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/senior-fare-on-trenitalia-for-us-citizen

The topic is about a different card but the bit about the code would still apply. So as funky as it seems to me, maybe it's not as funky as all that! Laurel is really active on the forums and I'm sure she'll be along with advice when she sees this question. Could be that there are other sites for creating this thing that don't look as iffy as the one you linked?

Posted by
32173 posts

My comments are along the same lines as Laura mentioned. This seems like a lot of trouble to go to for savings that could be achieved with advance purchase tickets. Also, if the CartaFreccia is only intended for legitimate residents of Italy, why would you want that?

Posted by
11251 posts

We lived in Italy and each had a cartafreccia. It was not worthwhile, even though we traveled ALL.THE.TIME. It is very hard to get the rewards at end-of-year, and all you really get in the meantime is 20% off food on the train. Yes, there are cartafreccia special fares but the advanced discounts are usually better. We only used cartafreccia discounts once or twice when we made a last minute decision to travel.

Posted by
642 posts

FYI- they have calculators to figure out your codice fiscale (I'm a dual citizen and have mine from my comune) but when I forgot it the store was able to use a calculator to figure out what it should be.