A British influencer has said Spain ‘should be disgraced’ over its self-employment system.
In a video shared online, Tom Hopcroft laid into Spanish bureaucracy and its complicated tax system, which he said is ‘designed to squeeze every last bit’ out of you.
The businessman, who runs the GuirisdeMierda lifestyle brand, jokingly captioned the video: ‘I’m moving back to England.’
He told his followers: ‘Today, I’m saying f*** Spain… I’m currently in the process of doing some tax stuff.
‘I’m not going to go into it too much but it’s like tax, autonomo, like freelancer stuff… what it is to be a freelancer, what it is to be a company…
‘It is just the biggest ball ache ever to register your company, to do the notary… it is just such a pain in the ass, just so they can squeeze you for every penny out of the process imaginable, and make it difficult for you to take some power over your own life and become an entrepreneur.
‘It’s f***ing ridiculous, Spain should be disgraced for how they treat their entrepreneurs and how they treat people that wanna take some autonomy over their own lives and make something of themselves, not relying on a company.’
His video was flooded with comments of support, with dozens of residents and expats saying they could relate to the agony of being self-employed in the country.
One Brit wrote: ‘Spain is an amazing country but makes it almost impossible to dream big, the system encourages mediocrity.’
Another, Nick Hampshire, commented: ‘After being autonomo here for six months it’s crazy how the system works…
‘They do the very opposite of encouraging people to create and grow a business. Tax on another level… it’s the one thing the UK does 100x better.’
Many Spaniards said the ‘punitive’ self-employment system was the reason they moved abroad.
One wrote: ‘Spain and entrepreneurship do not go together, one of the reasons I left!’
The main gripe with being self-employed (autonomo) in Spain is that you must pay a fixed monthly social security fee, regardless of income.
This starts at around €289 per month, and must be paid even if you earned zero euros for the month – although the first year of being autonomo, it can be discounted to around €80.
If you do not pay your contributions, you can be handed hefty fines.
