Why does select SCOPE_IDENTITY() return a decimal instead of an integer?

Question

So I have a table with an identity column as the primary key, so it is an integer. So, why does SCOPE_IDENTITY() always return a decimal value instead of an int

Answer 1

In SQL Server, the IDENTITY property can be assigned to tinyint, smallint, int, bigint, decimal(p, 0), or numeric(p, 0) columns. Therefore the SCOPE_IDENTITY function has to return a data type that can encompass all of the above.

As previous answers have said, just cast it to int on the server before returning it, then ADO.NET will detect its type as you expect.