Starting a business with €30,000: cuota de autónomos (self-employed contribution) vs reality

«With €30,000 you can't even set up a sunflower seed stall in a shopping centre»

The question is asked by a reader with €30,000 in hand and one condition: no dragging a mobile business around village fairs. The first response he gets is not a business plan, but a question in return: and what do you know how to do?. In a thread peine in April 2015, everything peine: some recommended emigrating, some proposed a job placement agency, and a wave of calculations that clash with the fine print of the self-employed regime. The phrase in the subtitle is signed by a participant who claims to be a computer engineer and to have studied thousands of cases. The conclusion that repeats is uncomfortable: according to those counts, in Spain €30,000 is eaten up by overheads before the market gets a look in.

The cuota de autónomos (self-employed contribution) as a black hole

A calculation sneaks in early and sets the tone for everything that trinc. According to that calculation, the cuota de autónomos is around €300 per month, which is €3,600 per year. Without selling a single product, without renting a single square metre, just for existing as a business. That same number, over eight years, eats up the entire initial €30,000. Before 21% VAT, before IRPF (Spanish income tax), before any real expense.

There are those who counter that calculation with a comparison that is uncomfortable for the complaint narrative. If Spain charges you €300/month, this participant argues, Germany charges you €600: €300 for private health insurance with no co-pay and about €300 in contributions to retire on €700 a month at 67. From that perspective, the problem is not the level of the contribution but the state's appetite in general. The argument is left there, unresolved: some see a burden, others see a market price.

How much it really costs to open a business in Madrid

Another contribution lists cases that shatter any bar-room illusion. The numbers come from the conversation itself and are chilling:

• Cocktail bar in Madrid from scratch: from €100,000
• Motorbike shop with premises: €400,000
• Computer shop: €100,000 to start
• Sunflower seed stall in a shopping centre: €200,000

The conclusion of the person doing the count is not kind: almost all those businesses, moreover, are ruinous. And to truly succeed, he says, you have to do it «big, majestic, novel», which requires adding a zero to each figure. In Madrid, he concludes, only a very short list of illustrious surnames and a couple of multimillionaires in the sector—who are best not named here—can open businesses.

The agricultural sector: €3,000 per season per farmer

Where money really circulates, according to several first-hand accounts, is in the countryside. A medium-sized farmer can spend more than €3,000 per season just on seed, crop protection products and supplies. In the maize season in Galicia, one participant estimates, more than €150 million changes hands between sowing and harvest. Another voice from the trade, more ambitious, corrects upwards: that €3,000 is an underestimate, and the profit of a single farmer sustains an entire shop.

The nuance that throws you off: the business is not the one who plants, but the one who markets. Out of every ten who go into farming, nine fail the first year, according to one of the farmers themselves. The theory that Spain has too many tech entrepreneurs and too few manufacturers clashes with another reply: without application sectors, technology is not invented in a vacuum. The example cited is the French company Limagrain, today one of the world's largest producers of hybrid seeds, which did not start with a brutal investment but from the land itself.

Shopping centres: €3,000/month for seven square metres

Against the doom-mongering, some share their own experiences. One set up a business with €32,000 in savings and only the E.S.O. (Spanish compulsory secondary education) as studies. Another argues that there are profitable niches with €30,000, but no one is going to give them to you: you have to search for months. And one of the most striking facts appears: a seven-square-metre stall in a top-level shopping centre can cost €3,000/month, an outrageous sum that pays off if you find the right formula, because sales volume is brutal.

Even so, resistance is in the majority. «The niche of crappy websites is already taken», they conclude. Bureaucracy, the licence, the health permit and the corresponding environmental declaration complete the picture of a country that, according to several, behaves like a rich country in taxes and a third-world country in ease of doing business. In poorer economies, they recall, you can start a business with just €10,000.

And in the end, the financial option

When the conversation runs out, the cold calculation returns: invest the €30,000 in global indices or money market funds and wait. Buy a mortgaged chalet for holiday rental. Put it in investment funds and don't touch anything. The disconcerting fact: among the last replies in the thread, several point to not opening anything and putting the money in funds or indices.