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Spanish Social Security begins 2024 contribution review for 3.3 million self-employed workers
The three-phase procedure will impact all autonomos in Spain who carried out work in 2024
The Treasury in Spain has this week started calculating self-employed workers' contributions for 2024, marking the beginning of a three-phase procedure that will affect approximately 3.3 million autonomo workers across the country. If you're self-employed in Spain, this process will determine whether you've overpaid, underpaid or paid exactly the right amount in contributions based on your actual earnings last year.
Using data from income tax returns for 2024, which were submitted and finalised during 2025, the Treasury will calculate any discrepancies between the contributions that self-employed workers actually paid and the amounts they should have paid based on their declared income for that year.
Once this is done, each self-employed worker will be notified of one of three outcomes: they owe additional contributions to the Treasury, the Social Security system owes them a refund or there are no changes because no discrepancies have been identified.
The regularisation procedure will apply to all self-employed people who were registered in the Special Regime for Self-Employed Workers (RETA) during 2024, even if they were only registered for a single day during that year.
According to the Treasury, the regularisation process has been structured in three distinct phases.
Phase 1: January 2026
The first phase specifically targets self-employed workers who paid social security contributions in 2024 based on a higher contribution base than their actual income warranted. These individuals will be notified that they have the option to provisionally maintain the higher contribution base they used during that year, up to a maximum of their contribution base amount as of December 31, 2022.
They can request to keep this higher base amount until the last day of the month following the month in which they receive the notification. For example, if they receive the notification during January, they have until February 28, 2026 to make this request.
Self-employed workers can exercise this option through the Social Security electronic headquarters from this month.
If a self-employed person does not opt to maintain a higher base within the specified timeframe, the Treasury will automatically adjust their base according to their net income for the 2024 financial year.
Phase 2: Mid-February 2026
The Treasury's initial plan indicates that this phase will begin in mid-February 2026. During that month, several categories of self-employed workers will start receiving notifications of their regularisation resolutions:
- Self-employed workers who contributed based on a higher amount than that determined by their earnings
- Self-employed workers who paid contributions based on a lower amount than that determined by their earnings
- Self-employed individuals who did not file their personal income tax return for 2024 or who filed it but did not declare income under the direct estimation regime
Phase 3: Date to be confirmed
The final phase will involve notifying self-employed workers whose contribution base will automatically become final, although no specific date has been set for this stage. In these cases, the base will be finalised directly because it falls between the minimum and maximum bases for their corresponding income bracket, or because the entire registration period for the 2024 tax year is considered non-adjustable.
How to access your regularisation results
The electronic notification containing the result of the regularisation can be consulted and signed through the Social Security's electronic notification service or on the DEHú portal.
Self-employed workers and their authorised representatives can monitor the progress of their procedure by checking the status of their notification:
- "Pendiente de emisión" ("Pending issuance") indicates that the communication with the regularisation result has not yet been generated
- "Pendiente de lectura" ("Pending reading") means the notification is now available for review
- Once the notification has been read, or after the 10-day period has elapsed since it became available, the full details of the regularisation of contributions can be consulted in the dedicated section on the Social Security portal
Possible outcomes of the regularisation
The result of the regularisation process may take one of three forms:
- Refund: A refund will be issued when there are differences in social security contributions in favour of the self-employed worker. The Treasury will automatically refund the amount specified in the resolution to the self-employed worker's bank account before April 30, 2026.
- Payment due: Payment is required when there are differences in social security contributions owed to the Treasury. The self-employed individual must pay the amount specified in the resolution before the indicated date to avoid potential surcharges. The payment document is available in the regularisation service section of the website.
- No difference: No action is required when no discrepancies have been detected in the contributions paid.
Also of interest: Spain proposes increasing minimum wage to €1,221 in 2026
Image: Freepik
