Payment by large companies and administrations is not only not improving, but is getting worse. Last year, 85% of the largest companies exceeded the legal payment deadline between companies by seven days, reaching up to 67 days. And administrations more than doubled this, settling at 70 days, instead of the 30 established in the regulations, according to the Multisectorial Platform against Default (PMcM), which brings together one million companies and self-employed workers.

The new income tax return campaign has already begun. In Catalonia, during the approximately three months it will last, the Tax Agency expects to refund 2,087 million euros to 2.2 million citizens. In contrast, the entity expects to collect 5,386 million euros from 1.9 million Catalans. The total amount of money that taxpayers will have to pay, therefore, increases by 15.6% compared to last year. Regarding wealth tax, the Tax Agency expects to collect 882 million euros. Thus, revenue from this tax will soar by 15.8% compared to what was collected last year, when the entity collected 761 million from Catalans. The number of declarations for this tax will also increase, going from 94,500 last year to more than 98,000 expected to be processed this year.

It was a widespread demand. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the self-employed were calling for it, and it was also one of the points demanded by Junts in the Spanish government. Finally, the Verifactu electronic invoice verification system will have its mandatory implementation delayed by one year, moving to 2027 instead of January 1st for companies and July 1st for the self-employed.

Pimec Autónomos held its third annual Night of the Self-Employed on Monday, an event where the association's president, Elisabet Bach, advocated for "fairer rules of the game, adapted to the current reality," and for reforms to the Special Regime for Self-Employed Workers (RETA) and the Personal Income Tax (IRPF) to better suit the characteristics of self-employment, as well as administrative simplification. The event was attended by more than 250 people and also featured speeches by the Minister of Economy and Finance, Alícia Romero, and the president of Pimec, Antoni Cañete. The president of Pimec Autónomos emphasized that there are 570,000 self-employed workers in Catalonia, and that 9 out of 10 Catalan businesses are micro-enterprises and self-employed individuals, with or without employees, contributing 25% of the Gross Value Added (GVA) and 20% of employment. "We are the foundation of the country's productive economy," Bach asserted. In this regard, the president urged the authorities to address the factors that "diminish the growth potential" of the self-employed, such as excessive bureaucracy and a reform of the Personal Income Tax (IRPF) "that encourages savings and investment, growth, and does not penalize the self-employed when things are going well, under conditions similar to other business structures." "We also advocate limiting the liability of the self-employed, excluding essential assets from their business liability," Bach asserted. "Every self-employed person represents a life project, and we must ensure that a failure does not shatter a life."

The new social security contributions for the self-employed are one of the hot potatoes the Spanish government has on its plate and must resolve before the end of the year. The idea is that new social security contributions will come into effect on January 1, 2026, but negotiations between the Ministry of Social Security and the main organizations are stalled. With no date in sight for a new meeting, in recent days the main self-employed workers' organizations have made their demands clear. First, ATA, the organization within the Spanish employers' federation CEOE, did so; then UPTA, linked to UGT; and this Monday, UATAE, close to CCOO, followed suit. The organization headed by María José Landaburu has not only supported freezing current social security contributions for the lowest income brackets—a move also applauded by ATA—but is also proposing subsidies for social security contributions in brackets below the minimum interprofessional wage (SMI) and in intermediate brackets. Specifically, UATAE has detailed its support for a "regressive" subsidy of contributions for self-employed workers with lower incomes. This means a larger subsidy for the lowest brackets, gradually decreasing for higher brackets. "Reducing contributions for the lowest brackets without any additional measures leads to a reduction in contribution bases, which diminishes social protection for the most vulnerable, despite their significant contributions," the association argued at a press conference this Monday. If put into practice, Landaburu explained that this bonus would translate into a reduction in the current minimum rate paid by self-employed workers with net income below the minimum wage. It's worth remembering that the reform approved in 2022 and implemented in 2023 requires self-employed workers to contribute based on their actual income, so that future social security benefits, historically much lower than those of workers affiliated with the general Social Security system, are higher. At the beginning of negotiations for new contributions starting in 2026, the Spanish government proposed a general increase for the period 2026-2028. Faced with this rejection, the ministry headed by Elma Saiz has revised its proposal and is now focusing solely on 2026. It has proposed a freeze on contributions for the lowest income brackets and a progressive increase of up to 2.5% in the case of the highest brackets.

Three years after the reform that was supposed to bring order to the self-employed regime, the Spanish government is once again stumbling over the same problem: the discomfort of a group that feels despisedThe proposal to increase quotas over the next three years was short-lived.

The state government assures that the increase in self-employed contributions will be "moderate" and "manageable." But when a self-employed person hears these words, they already know what they mean: that, once again, they will have to pay a little more while everyone else looks the other way.

It's just a photo, but it's more than a photo:

The increase in contributions that the Spanish government intends to impose on the self-employed over the next three years will strangle many who barely manage to pay the current tax bracket each month, including all those who earn less than the minimum wage. Living in Catalonia (where it is always more expensive) has risen by 2.6% in the last year, and higher contributions without greater benefits send workers into the shadow economy. We could say similar things about the withholdings from wage earners' salaries.

Former Social Security Minister José Luis Escrivá (PSOE) left his successor, Elma Saiz, with pending tasks regarding the special regime for self-employed workers (RETA): determine new Social Security contributions starting in 2026Negotiations with unions, employers' associations, and the main self-employed workers' organizations (ATA, UATAE, and UPTA) have already begun, and despite being scheduled for the agenda, they have raised a storm, especially politically. These are the key points of the debate:

The Ministry of Social Security has opened the Pandora's box regarding self-employed contributions. In a new meeting this Monday with the main representative organizations of this group, the ministry headed by Elma Saiz presented an initial proposal to determine the contributions for the next three years for those affiliated with the special regime for self-employed workers (RETA). Specifically, with the new Social Security approach, the contributions currently paid by self-employed workers who contribute at the minimum base will increase by between €17.37 and €206.24 per month in 2026, depending on each worker's net income, that is, the income obtained after taxes have been paid.

The Spanish government and social partners have begun negotiations for new contributions for self-employed workers starting next year and continuing through 2028. However, the social dialogue table has not gotten off to a good start: ATA, the self-employed workers' association within the CEOE (Spanish Economic and Social Council), did not attend. "We will not open a new chapter for 2026 until the 2023 chapter is closed," stated the president of the association, Lorenzo Amor, via social media. For ATA, it is essential to resolve the problems the new model has encountered since it came into force three years ago before discussing a new one.

Late payments aren't disappearing. Despite various regulations, the obligation to pay suppliers within a maximum of sixty days is not met by many companies, which have payment terms that can even exceed three hundred days. The Multisector Platform against Late Payment (PMcM), which claims to represent around one million SMEs and self-employed workers and is led by the Catalan employers' association Pimec, has once again warned about this and emphasizes that late payments are a "structural and widespread" problem in the Spanish business world. It is also a veritable "time bomb" that the European Commission wants to defuse through a regulation that includes reducing payment terms to thirty days, with caveats; an automatic sanctioning system; and the creation of national supervisory authorities. However, it has not yet been implemented.

Despite their dedication to producing solar energy, it's a tough sell in the world of small photovoltaic investors. In addition to the retroactive cuts in remuneration—first approved by the Socialist governments in 2010 and subsequently consolidated and aggravated by the PP governments starting in 2012, with changes to the rules and turning the "Official State Gazette" into a dead letter—are the effects of regulation, which reduces the current amount many producers are currently experiencing. This is a positive situation for consumers thanks to the influence of renewables and the contributions these pioneers made, but it is now penalizing them, while large investors are not suffering because they have greater financial strength and can take advantage of economies of scale. "They're forcing us out of the market. Many have had to sell off," complain the small investors, who number around 62,000 families, some 8,500 in Catalonia, especially in rural areas, and are demanding solutions from the Ministry of Ecological Transition.

The Digital Kit is a Spanish government initiative that, through European Next Generation funds, aims to subsidize self-employed individuals and micro, small, and medium-sized businesses (up to 250 employees) to implement digital solutions. It has a budget of €3.067 billion, was launched in January 2021, and has been extended—only for self-employed individuals—until October 2025. According to official data from Red.es, there are more than 670,000 beneficiaries across Spain, with more than 20% in Catalonia.

Over the past year, Daria and Patricia have gone the other way. The former—a surgeon who arrived from Ukraine three years ago due to the Russian invasion—became self-employed so she could exchange her student visa for a temporary residency and now works as an emergency room doctor for private clinics: "I worked on a 20-hour contract for a family when they recognized my qualifications, which allowed me to balance my work and have total freedom." She is happy with this option and, for the moment, has no plans to return to working for someone else, although at some point she plans to take the MIR exams to open the door to public healthcare.

I am misappropriating the famous title of Keynes's 1919 book, warning about how the impositions in Germany after the First World War would be impossible to comply with and would lead to a future crisis in Europe, to give you my point of view on the peace plan that Trump wanted to propose to Zelensky to stop the war in Ukraine.

Pau Riba has been trying for 22 days to complete an online procedure with the Business Creation Information and Network Centre (CIRCE), a digital platform that depends on the Ministry of Industry and that allows you to create or close a company in the State, as well as process a registration or a deregistration in the Special Regime for Self-Employed Workers. The platform "went down", says Riba through the social network X and considers it "shameful". And he is not the only user who has recently complained. This January alone, 6,815 procedures were carried out through CIRCE, of which 2,693 were related to the creation or closure of a company and 4,114 affected self-employed workers.

There is already a first image of the adjustment through which the State is adapting the contributions that the self-employed pay each month to their real net income. Today, the General Treasury of Social Security has donated to publish the first results of the annual regularization process of the quotes of the self-employed corresponding to the 2023 exercise, which will last until the end of April 2025. It has arrived after a review of the results. contributions and the guanys declarations in 2023, that is, after creating the data of the Social Security and the Tax Agency.

The Ministry of Inclusion and Social Security has tabled a proposal for the new system of tax contributions by the self-employed, calculated using "real income". The ministry has made changes in terms of the contributions to be paid by self-employed workers with less income, as well as the bands into which they would be divided according to their income.