The objective of the Minister of Social Security, Elma Saiz, of having the new contribution system on real net income of the self-employed on the dates scheduled by the Ministry – which had planned to have the data updated starting next November – is moving away and complicates compliance with the regularization process of these contributors, which should be resolved maximum date in March 2025as communicated by the Secretary of State for Social Security, Borja Suárez, to the main self-employed associations (ATA, Uatae and UPTA) and the social agents (CEOE, Cepyme, CC OO and UGT) in the technical meeting last Monday.
The problem is that the process that compares the tax data crossed between the Ministry, the Tax Agency and the Provincial Treasury is resulting more complicated than anticipatedespecially when Social Security decided at the last minute to change the data reception system. As LA RAZÓN has learned from authorized sources, Social Security initially requested the tax data of the self-employed “raw”to process them directly”, a situation that “has overwhelmed them” and, therefore, they claimed that said tax data will arrive already filtered, with the consequent delay in the processes. “You cannot change the rules halfway, because the only thing that can cause are logical delays.” The president of ATA, Lorenzo Amor, already warned at the time that this system had an enormous “complexity” that could lead to problems to account for the data.
own Suárez has recognized that this new contribution system entails “great technical complexity” for the 3.7 million self-employed workers who were registered during 2023, for which those who registered in the new system must be verified if they contributed according to the real net returns obtained, some 550,000 self-employed workers.
Ministerial sources explained to this newspaper that they rule out any significant delays, since «It is a very long process in which we are in the first phase of receiving the tax data. It is the first year it has been done and there may be problems, but we do not contemplate delays despite its complexity. When the data is already processed, this regularization would end in a refund of the extra amount paid or an additional charge that the self-employed person must pay, in a similar way to what workers of the General Regime do with the income tax return. This would complete the first process of liquidating the social contributions of the transitional contribution process based on net returns, which must be the previous step to the definitive payment system for real income in 2026, which is still pending negotiation between the Ministry and the self-employed associations.
He Ministry will convene again at the negotiating table to address other issues that concern self-employed workers, such as the reform of the cessation of activity – known as unemployment of the self-employed –, the subsidy for self-employed workers over 52 years of age or early retirement for especially difficult activities or the reduction of the gap in pensions between self-employed and salaried employees.
The president of UPTA, Eduardo Abadonce again demanded that the Government, “once and for all”, a solution is given to the pending issues». «The meeting had lights and shadows. The first are related to having been able to learn information about the operation of the new system, but the shadows are due to the passive attitude that Social Security is showing to resolve these issues. He The Ministry has already shown its “maximum willingness to inform and collaborate with the group in all these processes.”
Some 550,000 self-employed have changed to the new quota system based on the real income received – less than 18% of the total –, of which some 300,000 have increased their base, compared to the other third, which has lowered it.