Spain Mobilizes To Maintain Flat Rate For Self Employed Workers

The PP mobilizes to maintain the flat rate for self-employed workers after UPTA’s request to modify it. For UPTA, it is a false self-employed factory.

The Popular Group has taken to the Plenary of the Senate a motion for the Government to maintain the flat rate for the self-employed, especially for people with disabilities and autonomous mothers. All this, after the Union of Professionals and Self-Employed Workers (UPTA) affirmed that it is a “very expensive strategy to promote entrepreneurship” and that it promotes the creation of false self- employed workers .

Last week, Eduardo Abad, president of UPTA, warned that, in the negotiations that were to be carried out during these weeks between the representative organizations of the self-employed, the social dialogue and the Government, this would be one of the issues that he would have to be analyzed and corrected in order to establish the bases of the new contribution system.

“We are not willing for this economic waste of Social Security to continue being a universal aid without verifying that, behind each one of them, there is a true entrepreneurial project,” they pointed out from the Union.

The PP seeks the unanimous support of the Chamber
In defense of the motion, the Senator of the Popular Party for Zamora, José María Barrios, assured that the proposal of the motion is “positive and with the encouragement and hope that it will have the unanimous support of the Chamber , because we believe that it is it is better to try to reach a consensus, in order to favor a highly penalized group, such as the self-employed “.

Barrios has indicated that the doubts arise after “the elusive answers” of the Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migrations, José Luis Escrivá, about the new contribution system in the RETA based on the returns for the economic activity carried out.

“How is it possible that an entrepreneur who starts earning 3,000 euros a year, has to pay 2,400 euros in social contributions?”, Asked the senator during the plenary session. “With the flat rate approved by the Popular Government, it would only pay 600 euros , at a rate of 50 euros per month – the PSOE raised the flat rate to 60 euros -“, ​​he concluded.

For their part, UPTA alleges that the flat rate should be a launch aid for those economic activities that are really in a situation of need and demonstrate their viability. “For those who are in a better situation, a system proportional to their price should be established once the fiscal year ends and it is verified that their annual economic returns exceed a certain economic volume,” they explain.

According to data from the Union of Professionals and Self-Employed Workers, from 2013 to 2021 – period during which the flat rate has been active-, 3,231,078 self-employed have been registered and the net growth in the RETA barely reaches the 217,000 in this period.

On the other hand, only 13% of the economic activities that began in 2019 continue in operation, some 57,000 , out of the 442,282 that had benefited from the flat rate in that year. “Currently we have 467,097 freelancers with reductions between 80% and 30% of the RETA contribution,” they explain from UPTA.