Treasury compensates for refunds to the self-employed, taxes deferred due to COVID-19

The SME Platform claims that it makes no sense for these deferrals to lose their effect when the self-employed are entitled to a refund.

"At a time of deep crisis, serious lack of liquidity and high levels of indebtedness," the SME Platform has confirmed that the Tax Agency (AEAT) is offsetting refunds from the annual Income Tax Return for 2019, submitted by self-employed workers in recent months, with the deferrals or fractioning of taxes activated by the Government due to the coronavirus. In other words, the Treasury is deducting from the self-employed workers' returns the taxes that it previously deferred.

In Royal Decree-Law 7/2020 of March 12, the Socialist Executive adopted urgent measures to respond to the economic impact of the coronavirus. One of them was tax deferrals for SMEs and self-employed workers. For this reason, the SME Platform "considers it unacceptable that the spirit of RDL 7/2020 to support the self-employed and their liquidity is distorted."

"It makes no sense for these deferrals to lose their effect when the self-employed are entitled to a refund in their income tax return and must therefore give up the small injection of liquidity that these refunds may represent, especially in months of absolute inactivity due to the absence of tourists and the difficult reopening of businesses in many places in Spain due to outbreaks and confinements," they denounce.

Situation "more dramatic than what they tell us"

This attitude of the Treasury "is yet another example of the insensitivity of public administrations towards the self-employed, as well as the difficult economic situation of the Kingdom of Spain, which advises resorting to economic rescue as soon as possible with conditionality, as the Platform has been proposing since April 14."

This body suspects that if they are “scraping” in this way the small refunds from the Income Tax returns of the self-employed it is because “the situation in Spain is more dramatic than what the authorities are telling us”. Finally, this platform demands the immediate refund of the negative Income Tax returns of 2019 to the self-employed, without compensating them with the extraordinary deferrals promoted in March, or automatically granting public financing lines to the self-employed and SMEs affected by this compensation, which will hinder their liquidity in such difficult times.

This is not the first time that the Government has outraged the self-employed during the coronavirus crisis. Fees that will not be returned, lack of tax reductions, confusion, incentives to close... self-employed workers have been some of the most mistreated in recent months, something that their representatives have been denouncing.