The Government maintains its proposal for sections and quotas for the self-employed and ATA moves away from the agreement

UPTA, on the other hand, sees the proposed system as "perfectly affordable" and Uatae asks to further reduce the fee for the sections with the lowest incomes

MADRID, 6 Jun. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Government has met this Monday with the self-employed organizations and social agents to continue negotiating the new contribution system for real income for the self-employed group, keeping unchanged the proposal of 13 tranches and contributions that it made at the end of May, and in which it proposes quotas of between 250 and 550 euros per month for the period 2023-2025.

This has been explained to Europa Press by the heads of the self-employed organizations UPTA and ATA, Eduardo Abad and Lorenzo Amor, whose points of view differ quite a bit on this issue. While UPTA sees the Government's proposal as "perfectly assumable", ATA rejects it, so everything indicates that there will not be a unanimous agreement on this matter in the social dialogue.

Uatae, for its part, has asked the Ministry of Social Security to make a greater effort to lower the fees of the sections with lower incomes so that "these are not the ones that finance the system." "In the low section, someone who earns 400 euros a month pays more than 60% of the fee, while in the high section the effort does not reach 15% of their income," Uatae sources have told Europa Press.

The proposal presented by the Government at the end of May proposes that in the first six sections, corresponding to net returns of between 670 and 1,700 euros per month, the self-employed pay Social Security between 250 and 294 euros of monthly fee, which would mean reductions between 52 and 65 euros compared to what they pay now on average monthly, according to UPTA calculations.

On the other hand, in the remaining seven sections, which range from 1,701 to 4,050 euros per month of net income, the self-employed would have to pay Social Security a fee of between 400 and 550 euros per month, which means between 35 and 107 euros more per month compared to the current average.

After the meeting on Monday, the president of UPTA, Eduardo Abad, stressed that, in addition to sharing with the Government the need to launch this new system in 2023, he sees the Executive's proposal as "perfectly acceptable".

"The sections that the Government has proposed are perfectly affordable and will make 2.4 million self-employed lower their contribution effort between 400 and 1,050 euros per year and will hardly mean a rise in the contribution for those with higher incomes, since the The average contributions they pay now hardly represent a difference of 20%", Abad defended.

This being the case, at UPTA they want this new contribution system to be finished designing next week with the greatest possible unanimity in order to be able to approve it as soon as possible. "We demand that the Government make courageous decisions next week and that, once and for all, determine the implementation of this system," said Abad.

In this way, the president of UPTA has urged the Executive to propose next week a "definitive or almost definitive" text that can be taken to Congress for approval.

On the contrary, the president of ATA, Lorenzo Amor, has described as "unacceptable, with what is falling in this country and what is going to fall", the table of contributions that the Government proposes that the self-employed pay during the next three years.

"Raising the contributions between 33% and 90% to practically a million self-employed is something that we cannot accept. (...) Either the Government brings its contribution proposal closer to what the business organizations, CEOE, once proposed , Cepyme and ATA, or unfortunately we cannot be in any type of agreement", warned Amor, who has insisted that his organization will not support that a million freelancers "are going to be hacked".

ATA, CEOE and Cepyme have proposed that in 2023, 2024 and 2025 the minimum fee to be paid by the self-employed each month is 205 euros if their net income is equal to or less than 700 euros per month, the lowest income bracket of the 12 that they propose. In the highest bracket (net income greater than 3,620 euros per month), the minimum fee would be 329.7 euros in 2023, 365 in 2024 and 400.4 in 2025. The employers suggest that the self-employed with incomes above SMI and up to 1,500 euros will not see their share increase in the next three years.

In his opinion of Amor, the Government's proposal is "very far" from what the self-employed can assume at this time. "It is not just a rise in prices. We are paying much more expensive diesel, more expensive electricity, with production costs and raw materials also through the roof. The problem is that the cow does not give more milk," Amor stressed. .

Although the sections and the quotas proposed by the Government do not equally convince the representatives of the self-employed, it seems that there is a greater consensus regarding the social protection of the group.

According to Abad, the Government has proposed several different models for the collection of the benefit for cessation of activity: the extraordinary, which will become permanent in those cases in which the extraordinary rescue of a self-employed person is required; and the ordinary one, which the self-employed may avail themselves of in different situations.

Thus, as explained, the ordinary termination benefit may be capitalized in situations of "fragility" of the business and may also be used to help the self-employed who temporarily have to suspend their activity. "In all cases they will receive 50% of the contribution base and will have to demonstrate a loss of turnover of 75%", Abad has indicated.

The president of UPTA has also revealed that there is a "unanimous" agreement between the Government and the participants of the negotiating table to equate the benefits and contributions of those self-employed parents with children with serious or very serious illnesses to those of self-employed workers. alien

"There has been talk of the scope of benefits, of improving the benefits of the self-employed, and in that we can say that there is more consensus and there may be meeting points," confirmed the president of ATA, Lorenzo Amor.