How to start as a Psychologist with the Social Security registration in Spain

After studying for so long and having finished, you begin to consider the possibility of opening your own practice as a psychologist, but you are not sure what you have to do.

Despite how much you have studied, you discover that you know rather nothing about laws, procedures and various procedures than must be done if what you want is to register with Social Security and work as a professional in the yours.

Fortunately, today we bring a little light to the dark and in the following lines you will find an explanation about How to start as a psychologist by registering with Social Security, applied for self-employed in Spain.

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Guide to start working as a psychologist by registering with Social Security

Throughout the degree, those of us who study Psychology learn all kinds of knowledge related to our discipline, of course. We learn about personality, neurodevelopment, social behavior, statistics, psychophysiology and many other areas that are part of the essential that every psychologist must know to be able to exercise his profession.

Although they teach us about everything, there is an aspect that is left a bit aside and that I think should be explained a little better throughout the grade: what procedures are necessary to be able to practice as a psychologist.

Although it is true that there are subjects that present it to us a bit and, also, in some postgraduate training it is taught about what procedures to do to be able to work in a private practice, the truth is that the average bulk of recent psychology graduates has no idea what do.

In order to illuminate a little the path of the recent graduate regarding this issue, today we are going to talk about how to start as a Psychologist by registering with Social Security, something that although the website of the DE ALGO ministry itself explains it in all kinds of details, here we are going to address the most important points important.

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Registration with Social Security as a freelance psychologist

The law that manages Social Security registration for self-employed workers, in our case psychologists, is Law 20/2007, of July 11, whose last update was made on 12/31/2020. It is the Statute of the Self-Employed Worker, in which it is made explicit what is understood as a professional who works as such, defining it as follows:

"Individuals who carry out on a regular, personal, direct basis, on their own account and outside the scope of management and organization of another person, an economic or professional activity for profit, whether or not they give employment to self-employed workers alien ”.

According to this law, As long as an economic activity is carried out on their own and on a regular basis, it will be mandatory to register in the Special Regime for Self-Employed Workers (RETA), also known as the Special Scheme for Self-Employed Workers. This procedure is mandatory regardless of the duration of the work, its schedule and the remuneration received for it.

Regarding this procedure, it is necessary to highlight something. It is often heard that people who do not receive the Minimum Interprofessional Salary (SMI) do not have the need to register as a self-employed person. This is not true, since The key idea of ​​the law that regulates this aspect is not the amount of money we charge, but the frequency of the activity that we play. The obligation to register as a self-employed person occurs when an economic activity is carried out on a regular basis, regardless of the salary received by it.

As a curiosity to this fact, if we carry out any economic activity on a regular basis and, in exchange for it, we receive € 0 (already either because we do it in a welfare way or because they pay us in other ways) we have to register as freelancers of all shapes.

Conversely, If the activity we carry out is rather sporadic, in principle there will be no obligation to register. However, if even working on a one-time basis, we receive a salary higher than the SMI (1,108.33 euros per month / 13,300 euros per year in 2021) if that this procedure will require, although it should be noted that this is more related to the cases of individuals who exceed the annual SMI than not the monthly.

Equally, a manager should be consulted in the event of receiving a specific salary that is higher than the SMI to get rid of doubts about the need to register with Social Security.

But what is meant by habitual and punctual? The word "habitual" is related to "habit", and in this context it can be understood as all that activity carried out by a psychologist that has continuity and repetition in time, while "punctual" can be related to an activity that, although it is related to Psychology, has been done in isolation, sporadically. To better understand between the two situations and better discern them, below we are going to put four cases.

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Examples

Let's first look at several specific cases as an example, and then cases of habitual work as psychologists.

Case 1

We are graduates in Psychology and we have the General Health Master, but we do not practice. However, at one point an acquaintance who knows that we are psychologists asks us as a favor to listen to a problem that distresses him and to try to help him. As compensation for helping him and spending a little time, he pays us € 50.

Cases 2 and 3

We are working in our father's masonry company despite being psychologists. Our task is to help you and, in the event that new candidates appear, we interview them and we value your profile by acting a bit like “human resources staff”.

One day, An institute in our municipality contacts us asking if we can hold a conference on Psychology at their center, speaking of what training is necessary, what opportunities are there and what the profession of the psychologist is like. We do the conference and the institute pays us € 450.

In these two cases we can see that the activity related to Psychology is carried out sporadically. In the first case, one acts as a clinical psychologist only once, treating a single patient and in isolation, without carrying out a proper psychotherapy. In the second case we act very occasionally as something similar to a human resources person and only once as a psychology teacher. In neither case would it be necessary to register with Social Security as a psychologist.

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Case 3

We have just started a Psychology consultation and we advertise ourselves as psychotherapist psychologists for our city.

Regardless of whether or not we have clients on a given day, we have a full-time office and we are ready to receive calls from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. performing psychotherapy from Monday to Friday and we indicate that we charge between € 25 and € 45 per hour depending on whether it is the first session, type of problem to be treated and therapy of couple.

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Case 4

We open a web page where we offer clinical psychology sessions online. As in the previous case, we have hours of attention to our patients from 9 am to 5 pm, with similar prices and we indicate that we specialize in sexology and couple relations.

In both situations we have to register as self-employed in Social Security because, although we have very bad luck and we do not receive any clients for a whole week, we are offering a regular job.

Important: Regardless of whether or not we have the obligation to register as self-employed, it does not mean that we do not have the obligation to bill and declare any income for work to the Tax Agency.

Procedures and other paperwork

To register as psychologists in Social Security we have to follow a procedure, specifically that of registering in Social Security in the Special Regime for Self-Employed Workers. As we have mentioned, this procedure it will be mandatory to carry it out when the activity that we are going to carry out as psychologists is carried out in usual way or it is a one-off task but in which we receive an economic remuneration greater than the SMI.

The requirements to register are:

• Having registered with the Treasury in the 30 days prior to the date of registration with Social Security.
• In the event that the Tax Registration was for a specific activity, it must be explained and demonstrated that such was a specific activity.
• Bank account in our name
• Digital certificate

The necessary documentation To request such a procedure is:

• Model TA0521
• DNI / NIF
• Copy or original of our Tax Registration.
• Social Security Affiliation Card (only in case of having previously worked as an employee).

This procedure, as with everything in matters of bureaucracy, It can be done in two ways: online (recommended) and face-to-face (not recommended). The first can be done through the electronic headquarters of the Social Security website and using the Digital certificate, where the relevant documents will be requested from us and from the comfort of our home. In person, if we dare, we must make an appointment and go to the corresponding territorial delegation of Social Security.

Once the procedures have been completed, the documentation that will be delivered to us will be the receipt of Model TA0521.

At first, This procedure involves a total cost of € 0 but some of the procedures that have to be carried out related to it require specialized legal knowledge such as, for example, the contribution base, the calculation of benefits, the coverage for which it is quoted and many others. To facilitate the process, it is advisable to go to specialists, such as a manager and advisor to help us in this process. This is going to mean that we have to pay, of course, but it is preferable since they are going to take away a real headache.

Monthly payment or freelance fee

From June 1, 2021 until the end of the same year, the monthly quota for the self-employed in Spain will be 289 if it is quoted by the minimum base and 1,245.45 if it is quoted by the maximum base.

Flat rate

The Flat Rate of Social Security consists of a temporary reduction of the Social Security fee, and is applicable to new self-employed when they register. This flat rate consists of starting with a monthly payment of € 60 (until recently it was € 50) to Social Security instead of the 286.15 that constitute the minimum monthly payment in 2021.

The requirements to be eligible for the Flat Rate are:

• Register for the first time as a self-employed person.
• Not having been registered as a self-employed person in the last two years (3 in case of having enjoyed some type of previous bonus)
• That at least three years have passed since we were discharged as self-employed, if we had previously registered as such. *
• Not being a self-employed collaborator (special regime for family members of the self-employed).
• It can be repeated as long as 3 years have passed between discharge and the next discharge.