Have you been offered occasional work in Spain and you’re not sure what to do regarding tax and social security? Have you been offered regular work with a Spanish firm outside of your regular job? If you have, then you might have asked yourself if you need to register as self-employed, or autónomo, as it is called in Spain. And you might also have wondered whether, if you have to pay tax and social security on what you earn, it’s really worth taking it.
There’s no categorical answer, because reality is much more varied than the law can take into account. Even if you earn very little, there are a great many cases when, if you aren’t registered as self-employed, you could face a fine.
The Supreme Court has said that if your earnings are lower than minimum wage, you don’t need to register as self-employed, but there are many exceptions
Spain’s Social Security system defines the self-employed as “those who carry out an economic activity for money on a regular, individual and direct basis.” Although many professionals have no doubts about registering with the Special Regime for Self-employed Workers (RETA), there are circumstances when the law requires some interpreting to understand its reach.
For example, what does “on a regular basis” mean? How is it measured? “The truth is that this is a rather ambiguous criterion,” . A 2007 Supreme Court ruling states that if your earnings are lower than the minimum wage, you don’t need to register as self-employed. That means that if you earn less than €9,080,40 a year from your self-employed activities, and you work sporadically, then you don’t need to register with Social Security. But watch out, because everything is not completely black and white.
I earn less than the minimum wage. What should I do?
So you don’t have to pay into the Social Security system. Which is no small matter. The monthly contribution is around €260 each month, unless you are eligible for the €50-a-month flat rate for the first six months, with discounts thereafter. But don’t get too confident, as there are many nuances, and you could find yourself being fined for not paying into the system.
“There is no absolute rule,” “It’s a combination of factors that decide if you have to register or not.” For example, if you decide to open a store, Social Security will consider that a regular activity, and you’ll have to pay, even if you don’t sell a thing from one month to the next.
“The rules don’t take into account the minimum wage,” and Social Security always assumes that people are working on a regular basis.”
Being registered with the tax office is obligatory if you want to issue any kind of commercial document”
You can face the same problem if you set up an online business, you decide to sell t-shirts online. This is a marginal activity and your earnings are below the minimum wage, but Social Security will view it as the same as running a shop, That said, in this case it would be harder for it to prove that what you’re doing is a regular activity.
And, of course, even if what you’re doing isn’t a regular activity, but you make more money than the minimum wage, you’ll definitely have to register as self-employed. “This could be the case of an architect who receives a single commission in a year, but which is worth €18,000. It’s going to be considered a regular activity.”
In other words, if your earnings or the amount of time you spend working will be sufficiently large to surpass the threshold requiring you to register as self-employed, it is clear that you will have to register as soon as you start your business, however much you earn. “The law is designed for self-employed people who generate earnings from day one, but this isn’t what happens in reality,” .
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