The Government chose the moment with surgical precision: announce the increase in self-employed fees just the day when millions of them submitted their quarterly declaration. Not even Orwell would have written it better. The message is clear: in addition to paying, smile.
And it is not just a technical adjustment or a budgetary nuance. Because this is the story of an announced rise. It’s about who gets punished. In Spain there are more than 3.3 million self-employed peoplethat is, from professionals who bill, in many cases, just enough to survive and support their family; or small businessmen who rebuild their lives after a bankruptcy; or workers who chose self-employment as their last refuge.
They are the ones who support a good part of the productive fabric and, paradoxically, those who receive the least protection when the ground shakes: the pandemic, the La Palma volcano, the DANA in Valencia.
The self-employed who lost their homes, their cars, their means of production and did not receive what was promised by the State, also saw their fees rise. This increase is confirmation that the State prefers dependence over risk and obedience over initiative.
In the last five years, the number of self-employed people has grown slowly to exceed 3.37 millionbut that increase is misleading. 96% of growth since 2021 is due to foreign workers. They are the ones who still see Spain as a place where they can prosper through effort. The nationals, on the other hand, desert due to fiscal and bureaucratic exhaustion.
Meanwhile, costs skyrocket. According to the National Federation of Self-Employed Workers Associations (ATA), the loss of purchasing power has been around 15% since 2019, and only one in seven self-employed workers manages to save something at the end of the month.
Many accept precarious assignments or bill as “false self-employed”, not out of fraud, but out of pure survival. SMEs cannot hire, workers cannot wait, and the State, instead of relieving, tightens. Because the false self-employed person is born from a system that punishes both those who hire and those who want to work.
The Government justifies the increase in quotas with noble words: “equity”, “contributory solidarity”, “progress”. But in the institutional dictionary, those words mean something else. Equity It means suffering equally; solidarity, that the State keeps more; progressthat the self-employed person works more hours to earn less. Behind the virtuous lexicon hides a deeply misguided mentality: that of someone who sees autonomy as a problem and dependence as a virtue.
It’s not a coincidence. In Spain, the public power feels more comfortable administering aid than allowing it to prosper. Each self-employed person who is fiscally emancipated, that is, who does not need a subsidy or permission, embodies exactly what power fears and what for me is the basis of wealth: independence, responsibility, practical freedom. Raising fees is not about collecting more, but about reaffirming the moral dominion of the State over those who dare to live without its guardianship.
Therefore, more than a fiscal measure, this increase is the portrait of a country that punishes initiative and rewards docility.
We must not forget something that Jon González reminded us on social networks. The reform is not new: it was approved in 2022 via Royal Decree-Law 13/2022, with majority support. Only Ciudadanos and Vox voted against, so the Popular Party’s criticisms are hardly credible.
The objective is to align the contribution bases of self-employed workers with their real income.in a similar way to the general regime for employees. These increases are progressive until at least 2029-2030, increasing the bases (not the rates), which raises the monthly installments in tranches based on net returns.
Jon González, in addition to being very sensible and clear, is also very critical. Their conclusion is that the measure impoverishes the self-employed during their active lives without improving the sustainability of pensions in the long term. Good intentions remain a dead letter.
Maybe the mistake is to continue calling ourselves “autonomous”. We are less and less. We have gone from being economic agents to being monthly obedience taxpayers, monitored by a State that confuses redistributing with draining. While other countries facilitate the leap from self-employment to entrepreneurship, here the simple act of trying is penalized.
The Spain of the Sanchista regime does not hate the self-employed: it fears them. Because it represents a freedom that does not depend on appointments or subsidies. That uncomfortable freedom that consists of standing on one’s own efforts, without asking permission or applause.
That’s why the increase in fees hurts so much. Not because of the euros it costs, that too, but because of what it means. Because behind each receipt there is an implicit lesson: that the State does not care exactly about the citizen who does not need guardians. The clerk pours himself into the grateful stomachs whose votes he is assured.
And if you don’t believe it, look at the union leaders, those “representatives” of the workers in the shadow of the state subsidy, and see the lack of defense of the suffering self-employed. And that attitude of the government, tightening the screws on those who most need some slack to grow and create, to generate wealth, that, more than any crisis, is what truly impoverishes a country.