Statistics - Forced self-employment

Number of self-employer persons is increased in recent years, as shown statistics from the Social Insurance Agency. The advantage of working this way is the possibility of reducing the tax base and hence paying lower levies. Self-employer with income lower than € 1,400 has the option to pay contributions only from the minimum tax base (for this year € 339.89). Next year, there are changes in the bases, which is likely to be reflected in the number of self-employers and their income.

The total number of self-employers is increased every year since 2005, when there were nearly 254 000 until 2009, when they were most in number of 291 000 people. Subsequently, this number was reduced by 9,000 people in the next year and in 2011 the number of self-employers fell by a further 5.5 thousand to 277 thousand people.

The phenomena of forced self-employment spread especially in recent years and is becoming more common way of employment. Advantages brings to both – the employer and the employee, but the employee only disadvantages feel. Self-employer is not as protected against dismissal and the employer may at any time to cancel cooperation with the employee without any severance or without notice and does not state the reason. Another disadvantage for self-employers and working on an agreement is non-existent right to minimum wage and furlough, and hours of work of these employees is also not defined in the Labor Code. Such abuse of the labor force is difficult to prove, and workers often have no choice.

If self-employer's income is lower than € 1400 per month including, after deduction of the lump sum, paid levies last year and divided by the tax base by factor 2, is valid levies from the minimum assessment base € 339.29 (minimum levies). Next year's changes of the Labor Code are mainly focus on the amount of the payment of contributions for self-employers. Fixed expenses reach a maximum of 420 €, paid levies from the last year will no longer be able to deduct and the factor for calculating the assessment base will be from year to year to reduce at the level of 1.486 in 2015. These changes will affect (because of the large number of self-employers paying the minimum payments) more than 230 000 self-employers.