“I went blank when I saw the receipt”

BarcelonaThe week in which the more than three million self-employed people in Spain debuted the new quotas already began in confusion. An error meant that nearly 8,000 people who had just registered as self-employed were charged the normal minimum fee, instead of the €80 flat rate. The Ministry of Social Security admitted the mistake and assured that in the coming days those affected will receive an email to explain how the difference will be returned to them. And the fact that the entry into force of the new contribution system still generates some uncertainty among some self-employed: they fear that paying more will not end up helping them to improve access to benefits. At the ARA we spoke to some of these professionals from different sectors to tell us what this first month has meant for them in which they pay a fee according to the expected volume of income.

Laia, proofreader

The case of Laia Sánchez Amat falls into the category of freelancers who bill very little because, as she explains, she cannot take on more work as a language proofreader. “It’s very poorly paid and I’ve never set the prices. It makes me very happy that they ask us for an estimate of what we’ll be paying: unfortunately, we don’t even know it ourselves,” she laments. In fact, he says his income is so low that he can’t even afford to pay a manager to help him understand the changes he’s found in his bank account. “The new fee was 325 euros for a contribution base of around 1,023 euros,” he explains. After researching online and asking in a WhatsApp chat she shares with other self-employed mothers at the school, she has ended up assuming that an automatic rate base update has been applied to her and trusts that when she changes it she will be refunded the who has overpaid “The information is not accessible or easy to understand. The language is very obtuse and see that as a Catalan proofreader I think I have a certain linguistic competence”, she reasons.

Information is not accessible or easy to understand. The language is very obtuse”

Laia Sánchez Amat corrector

Pedro, photographer

Pedro’s first self-employed fee of 2023 was also 325 euros. He is a sports photographer and has been self-employed since 2017, first paying the flat rate and then running out with the minimum fee of 296 euros per month. “Fortunately, I managed to get a client to contact me and since I have an employment contract I no longer have to bill them. So this money will go to them and my fee will not be affected,” he explains. Like Laia, he is also disappointed by the way these changes have been reported. “There is no process, you are not notified. You find out about it through the news and at the end of the month when you receive the receipt. It seems good to me to pay taxes, it is necessary. But what is also necessary is to do pedagogy and put an end to false myths”, he claims.

Ariadna, psychologist

Ariadna, who is a psychologist, also does not quite understand why this January they have almost doubled her quota. Until now I paid 69 euros per month – the flat rate, with an extra year to work from a small municipality – which has become 108 euros. He had not yet exhausted the time in which he could benefit from this reduced fee and therefore believes that this is a mistake. “My management tries to ask the reason, because they don’t understand it either,” he explains. In the meantime, it continues to have the same patients as in December, and therefore the same revenue. “When I woke up and saw the bank receipt I was blank. On top of that, it was added to the semester fee I pay to the College of Psychology,” he says. As it is not clear whether his fee will drop again, for now he will draw on the savings he got from a young self-employed grant last year. “I also have the support of my parents, but I don’t like to depend on them financially. What I am clear about is that I will try to ensure that this extra cost is not passed on to my clients.”

With the new installment system, freelancers are paid according to their performance

Ernest, protètic dental

Ernest’s concern is that, despite paying a higher self-employment rate, when he retires his pension will still be “ridiculous” and not enough to live on. He is a dental prosthetist, that is to say, he works “making teeth” for clinics and has been self-employed for six years. He has calculated that his increase (he now has a fee of 325 euros) is 37 euros per month. “In the end it’s more expenses and you have to panic and look for more clients to bill more. But at the same time it also means paying more taxes, more expenses, more headaches… Being self-employed is always living with the agony of what problem you have you will find the next day or if when the receipts arrive at the banks you will be able to deal with the payments”, he points out. Even so, he has not considered becoming an employee because he already has a structure in place and he likes his job. “It’s maddening to always have to work with all these complications and make everything so difficult.”

Pep, entrepreneur

Pep’s situation is very different from the previous ones. He is 50 years old and has not paid the minimum contribution for some time because he wants to try to contribute more with retirement in mind. He owns a company in the metallurgical sector of which he is the only worker and this month the self-employed quota has risen by around 84 euros to over 800: “I thought that those we paid above At least they wouldn’t touch our quota, but it turned out that they did.” She’s worried about whether this extra effort will be worth it, and feels like it’s currently adding to other worries about her personal finances, such as having an adjustable-rate mortgage. “Each of these things influences the family economy… and rain on wet.”