The self-employed associations ask that data be crossed between Social Security and the Treasury to detect the economically dependent group
The fight against the fraudulent figure of the 'false self-employed' is the next objective of the Ministry of Labor and Social Economy team led by Yolanda Díaz. But who are these workers and how could a legal change stop their expansion, as the Government intends?
False self-employed workers are workers who register as self-employed workers, generally at the request of a company for which they work, often exclusively, and in this way they pay for their own Social Security contributions and have a commercial relationship with said company instead of employment, despite the fact that the conditions of his position are that of an employed worker. That is, for example, their schedule, breaks, work plan, and even means of production are the responsibility of the company that hires them commercially.
Díaz announced last week a double offensive against these false self-employed workers: a legal one, which would include changes in the norm; and another control by the Labor Inspection. Given this announcement, sources from the self-employed associations consulted assured that one of the legal avenues that Díaz could be considering would be to reinforce and promote the legal figure of the dependent self-employed worker – known as Trade – so that companies opt for them. , instead of by false self-employed people. Although Labor does not confirm this point.
The 'TRADE' are a hybrid figure between a self-employed person and an employee, because they are a self-employed worker, who pays their contributions, but given that at least 75% of their income depends on a single company, they have the right to sign a specific contract that is commercial, but includes a series of rights similar to those of employees, such as having a minimum of 18 business days of interruption of activity or contractually establishing the regime of weekly rest and holidays, or the maximum amount of the day, among others.
"The proposal of the associations of self-employed workers would consist of reinforcing the obligation of companies to recognize these contractual relationships with their Trades."
Although statistical calculations indicate that there are up to 300,000 self-employed workers who work for a single company or with other people's means of production, barely 10,000 trades have been registered per year in Social Security for ten years. This occurs because it is the contracting company's option to recognize or not recognize this type of relationship with its service providers.
The proposal of the associations of self-employed workers would consist of reinforcing the obligation of companies to recognize these contractual relationships with their Trades. And to do this, the main self-employed associations (ATA and Upta) agree that the first thing the Executive should do is detect how many economically dependent self-employed workers exist in Spain. This detection could be done – they add – by crossing the Social Security data from the RETA and the VAT returns from model 374. All self-employed workers and SMEs who have carried out operations with clients or suppliers that together exceed 3,005.06 euros per year with only one of them they are obliged to present this model to the Tax Agency.
"According to ATA calculations, the number of false self-employed workers in Spain would be around 72,120."
For its part, ATA has made an estimate of the number of false self-employed workers that currently exist, ensuring that they would not exceed 75,000. To arrive at this figure, they have taken into account that according to the INE in the second quarter of 2019 there were 143,500 self-employed individuals who work for a single company (4,63% of the total. If this percentage is applied to the 1,561,056 self-employed individuals without employees registered by Social Security at the end of the year (once the 9,000 registered Trades are discounted), the number of false self-employed workers would be around 72,120. For this reason, they consider that the problem of false self-employed workers has “more social and opinion relevance.” public than on its real dimension.”
Given this, ATA proposes "a regulatory review and the Trades recognition process, to address the challenges of the digital economy and facilitate the work of the Labor Inspection in prosecuting fraud by false self-employed workers."