Self-employed workers: study of the implications of the concept of a contracting entity in the payment of social security contributions

Joana Nogueira Gomes Carvalho Campos

Keywords

Self-employed workers; Contracting entity; Tax base; Tax rate.

Abstract

The scheme for self-employed workers has undergone a marked change with the new contributory code, including the provision of a single extended scheme which includes protection of workers in the event of illness, convergence with taxation of income from the tax base, seeking to bring it closer to the real remuneration of self-employed workers and the 'sharing' of social charges between self-employed service providers and their acquiring entities, in cases of a high concentration of services purchased by them.
With regard to contracting entities, their obligation to pay is established when the Social Security Institution automatically calculates the value of the services rendered to them by self-employed workers equal to or greater than 80% of the total activity of each worker independent and translates into payment of the contributions due.
This scheme has a clearly detrimental effect, since the self-employed person only declares the total value of his income in the following year, then only after the total value has been discovered of his own through the intersection of information with the tax authority, is that the contracting entity is notified that the self-employed person has provided 80% or more of the value of his total income to that contracting entity.
In our view, the solution would be to deepen the legislation, the mechanisms and the competences of the inspection action, both the ACT inspection and the social security, promoting a closer interconnection between these two and the AT, in order not only to increase but to make it more efficient and expeditious.
Alongside this reinforcement, the design of a new regime of self-employed workers closer to the regime of employees and investment in the promotion of stable working relationships, ie creation in the mentality and practice of Portuguese business benefits granted to entities employers that promote working relationships with stability and conditions of social protection of their workers.