Like the rest of the workers, the self-employed have the right to receive a retirement pension if they prove a series of requirements, among which the most decisive is the prior contribution. However, not only the contribution is important for these self-employed workers: in their specific case, the contribution base they have had throughout their career is key.
The problem for the self-employed is that the vast majority contribute to the minimum base, which in 2022 is 960.60 euros per month. Around 85% of these workers (some 2.8 million self-employed) find themselves in this situation, which, although it can benefit them in the short term, can create a real problem for them when it comes to collecting their future pension.
The reason is that in the short term, the contribution for the minimum base implies the payment of lower installments (30.6% of those 960.60 euros is not, logically, the same as the 30.6% of 2,000 euros) to Social Security, but it will be ‘bread for today and hunger for tomorrow’, given that contributing to low bases entitles them to smaller pensions.
Everything is explained with the , which takes into account the contribution bases of the last 25 years (300 months) to obtain the regulatory base of the pension and the years worked in total to calculate the percentage of the regulatory base to which one is entitled.
Thus, in a simple calculation, a self-employed worker who has contributed to the minimum base all the time, would have a regulatory base that would be around 1,000 euros (as long as he has not had stoppages in his profession, since in that case his regulatory base would be lower since the self-employed cannot benefit from the integration of gaps).
Then the number of years worked in total would come into play. A self-employed person who has only worked the minimum, that is, 15 years, will be entitled to 50% of the regulatory base (around 500 euros) and therefore to be able to collect the minimum pension ().
After those 15 years, the more time worked corresponds to a greater percentage of that regulatory base: for each of the following 106 months an extra 0.21% is given and for each of the following 146 months a 0 is given. 19% extra. The self-employed person who wants to collect 100% of his regulatory base will need to work for at least 36 years.
How to avoid a low retirement pension if you are self-employed
The key to being able to increase the amount of these pensions is for the self-employed to increase the contribution base. This can be done freely up to the age of 47, but from that moment there are certain restrictions that:
-If they do not exercise their right to contribute for higher bases, a self-employed person who at age 47 contributes for the minimum later will not be able to contribute for more than 2,113.20 euros per month.
-When they turn 48, the contribution base must be between 1,035.90 euros per month and 2,113.20 euros per month. Of course, if at age 50 they have completed more than 5 years as self-employed and have been contributing to the minimum base, they may have a base between 960.60 euros per month and 2,113.20 euros per month.
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