Is it necessary to be self-employed to invoice?

Regarding the issue of whether it is necessary to be self-employed to be able to invoice… I would say that it is. In other words, if you want to issue an invoice to a company with your NIF and that this invoice is completely legal, you should be registered as a self-employed person.

Now, they may have told you that if you do not exceed 3,000 euros in turnover per year with a client, you are not required to register as a freelancer. This is not true, but I think they say it because, in case your income is lower, they may not find out about your illegal situation.

If a company receives invoices from another company or from a self-employed person for a value greater than 3,000 euros, it must make a special declaration of these invoices to the Treasury. These billing declarations above 3,000 euros are always crossed. So if the Treasury receives a statement from a company about invoices issued by you in excess of 3,000 euros, it will follow the track until it sees that you are not registered as self-employed and therefore could not have invoiced these amounts.

I am not absolutely certain about this, but I believe that it is so. In any case, I would like to tell you that many years ago, when I started offering my website creation services, I issued some invoices with my ID to a company and more than 5 years have passed and neither the treasury nor the social security have ever told me anything . I also know of a friend who has issued invoices with his NIF without being self-employed and they have not told him anything so far.

Another solution to be able to issue invoices, which I have carried out on occasion and which some of my friends have opted for, is to find a company that is willing to issue the invoice in their name. Since a company that issues an invoice is going to have to declare it and pay taxes for it, the logical thing is that it charges you some amount for carrying out the management. They can issue the invoice as a personal favor, but they usually don’t want to do it without getting anything in return.

In any case, this is a question that you should try to ask the relevant official bodies, such as Social Security, or your nearest INEM office.