Fake self-employed: billing a single client hides labor risks

Billing one client: the border of fake self-employment

He registered as self-employed to repair appliances. He bought a second-hand van —sold to him cheaply by the same person who sent him jobs—, set up his tools, and started billing monthly. Half of what he billed went to costs. After seven months, he quit. It is the exact picture of the fake self-employed: all the costs of being an entrepreneur, none of the benefits. The question that has circulated for years is not how to detect it, but why so many still exist.

When is a self-employed worker actually an employee?

The short answer is when someone else organizes your work. If you cannot hire a substitute for your holidays, if you do not decide your start and end times, and if you deliver services under the payer’s discipline, the label is wrong. The legal boundary is called economically dependent self-employed worker, the status that activates when more than 80% of billing comes from a single client. Here, the contract should be registered with the SEPE and contribute accordingly. Many discover this only after years of operating this way.

Why is this model so profitable for those who hire?

Because the contribution rate differs. A self-employed worker pays around 31%; an employee, about 40%, and on the full gross amount, not on a chosen bracket. Numbers circulating among those affected are telling: hiring an employee for €60,000 costs the company around €80,000 so the worker receives about €56,000 gross. The same profile, billing and taking the minimum bracket —€605.42 monthly contribution— would take home €72,734.96 before taxes, with margin to deduct a computer, vehicle, or connection. When someone notes they would have saved €150,000 by choosing this, they are not exaggerating: it describes the differential.

The power of equal negotiation and its flip side

There is a current defending the system without nuance: if every worker billed their services, it argues, unemployment would fall, bad contracts promising two hours but demanding eight would end, and negotiation would be head-to-head —pay me this or I leave tomorrow—. The flip side is hostage-taking: with a single client demanding 100% of your time, the payer stops competing to keep you and starts extorting you. This sums up a repeated idea: unbearable is not being self-employed or an employee, but combining the costs of the first with the discipline of the second without keeping any advantages of either. Labor relations, they note from the other side, are inherently asymmetric: one side organizes, sanctions, and fires; the other can only accept or leave.

Why do banks distrust self-employed workers more?

Because of income instability, the difficulty of proving solvency with declarations varying month to month, and the absence of a fixed payslip with a labor contract. Added to this is that there is no unemployment benefit and that contributions are paid entirely from your pocket. The nuance comes from the other side: a dismissal can happen anytime, so the supposed stability of an employee is relative, and life or income taxes also apply to the self-employed. For a credit line to buy a shop or warehouse, neither helps: the bank asks for a personal guarantor, and in a limited company, that guarantor is usually yourself with all your present and future assets.

What changes with contribution based on real income?

That the bracket narrows. The schedule tightens the adjustment of minimum and maximum bases, and the roadmap points to 2032: then a self-employed worker earning €1,500 would contribute on €1,500 and could no longer choose a base between €960.78 and €1,500 as now. The planned narrowing for 2026 ended with a ministerial correction after sector uproar. And the Labor Inspection also moves: in a known case, reviewing a TV presenter’s contract at Spanish Television forced regularization of her relationship to fit the law, with a salary drop included; she claims via judicial channels the difference, more than €269,000 from the previous contract.

There remains the detail that disorients. Consulting, with highly qualified profiles and high billing, is one of the biggest nurseries for this figure, and the dependency regime was designed precisely for them. It remains the exception. Meanwhile, who bills monthly from Portugal summarizes it without drama: three years, one monthly invoice, and no problems. The issue was never legality. It was that almost no one has incentives to stop looking the other way.