Covid-19 Employee safety measures
Re-entering the work place, what you need to know.
COVID-19 The chaos of the legislation so far……
The Covid-19 crisis has underlined the fact that Spain does not have a single Government. It has 18, and that is the ignoring the 8.131 municipalities, which, thankfully, have limited powers to legislate. Apart from the Government of the Spanish State, Spain has 17 Autonomous Communities, some of which have ambitions to become separate countries. … Read more
Covid-19 – activities forced to close by Government regulations
The original “State of Alarm” declaration was promulgated by the Government with its Royal Decree 463/2020 of 14 March, which contained a list of activities that were closed with immediate effect. The list has grown over time with further regulations. The original closure was for 15 days expiring at midnight on 29 March and this … Read more
The Covid-19 mortgage moratorium
This article focuses on the rules concerning the emergency measures to assist people during the Covid-19 crisis, in particular the rules that enable people to benefit from the mortgage payment moratorium. This measure was incorporated into the Law 8/2020 of 17th March, which introduced urgent and extraordinary measures to support the economy to face the … Read more
Covid-19 Labour update 20/3/2020
In normal circumstances the temporary closure of a business or the substantial modification of employee working conditions is a slow, complex and expensive process. The Spanish system seems to be designed to catch out employers and an insignificant error in the formalities can undo the whole process, with very expensive consequences. In general terms, where … Read more
Covid-19 Declaration of the State of Alarm 14/03/2020
For many weeks we have all been observing the outbreak of this disease with a kind of detached fascination – but reality has finally struck home in Spain. With effect from 14 March, the Government declared a ‘State of Alarm’ using legislation that dates back to 1981. This allows the Administration extraordinary powers for the … Read more
Social Security repayments for new businesses
A Supreme Court ruling in December 2019 has created a valuable opportunity that allows recently set up businesses to reclaim social security contributions. In 2014 the Government introduced measures to stimulate the creation of new businesses. One of these measures was to grant the newly self employed a substantial reduction in their contributions for the … Read more
A New Law for the Self Employed (Autonomos) in Spain
Self employed persons (autonomos) and small companies represent 95% of the Spanish economy. In particular, autónomos are very relevant to the growth of the Spanish economy although there have been very few incentives to stimulate the creation of small business from a tax and social security perspective. The Spanish Government made a timid effort in … Read more
Paying Company directors what they are worth
The dubious sight of well-paid businesspeople walking away from soon to be bankrupt companies—but not before pocketing millions of Euros (in some cases hundreds of millions of Euros)—rightly raised a stink, particularly with those less fortunate employees who lost their jobs and shareholders who lost their money. It was even more unedifying when directors at … Read more
Important employment and self employment incentives
The Spanish social security system is difficult for foreigners to understand and is extremely expensive for employers. The good news is that the government has at last introduced some meaningful employment incentives in the 2014 social security system. They really broke the mould with these incentives, well 50% broke anyway, as one of the new … Read more
