The average profit of “registrars” was almost half a million in 2022. That of “notaries”, 380,000 euros. The “bullfighters” earned almost 51,000 euros on average, 7,240 euros more than in 2019. These registrars, notaries and bullfighters are part of the universe of self-employed people in our country. A heterogeneous universe that hardly fits the image of the suffocated self-employed worker, who cannot make ends meet. There are freelancers who are doing very well. Professions and businesses that achieve significant benefits (financial, legal, sports, engineering, health activities…) and with great growth in recent years, which is another proof of the positive structural changes of our economy towards more valuable sectors added—and more productivity—.
These conclusions can be drawn from the Tax Agency’s statistics on the “evolution of returns from economic activities 2018-2022”which offers details about the self-employed through their Personal Income Tax (IRPF) declarations, and which allows you to know how much they earn, how many fail or how much they increase in number in each sector.
elDiario.es has analyzed this data, which is shown in the graphs of this information. The first includes the total number of self-employed people at the end of 2022, just over three million, a figure similar to that of 2019. With this preliminary approach to the statistics, stagnation could be pointed out. However, if the growth and decline of the different branches of activity are observed, another more positive result is obtained. The number of self-employed workers in traditional sectors – commerce, hospitality or agriculture and livestock – falls. But it increases in sectors related to financial and legal services, with industry – and specifically with aeronautics – and with artistic activities.
Another aggregate figure that points in the same direction is the increase in the total profit generated by the self-employed, with respect to which personal income tax is paid at the corresponding rate. In 2022, it rose to 41,620 million euros, from 34,240 million in 2019—a growth of 21.5%—and after sinking in 2020 to 29,173 million, according to the same statistics.
This evolution is the reflection of a modernization of Spain’s economy. A transformation that is based on a higher level of education and training in general, on the major economic policies that have reduced precariousness in society as a whole (the labor reform, the increase in the SMI, the pension reform, the Recovery Plan…) and in other social changes that have their mirror in other macroeconomic issues such as the good progress of the foreign sector – thanks to exports of non-tourist services, also with high added value – or the outstanding growth economic (GDP).
Exorbitant benefits of registrars and notaries
Diving into the benefits that the self-employed obtain in each activity, and observing how these profits have grown in some professions or businesses since before the pandemic, helps to understand this modernization of the economy, and also provides a good handful of anecdotes. The first notable ones, without a doubt, are the high benefits of registrars and notaries in our country. The first are close to 470,000 euros on average, the second, 380,000 euros. Always on average, which means that some of the 1,093 registrars and 2,368 notaries (probably those who do it in Madrid or Barcelona) collected by the Tax Agency earn even more, or much more.
These data that can be seen in the second graph of this information are from the activities of the self-employed who pay taxes through the direct estimation model. In this case, most of those related to agriculture, livestock and fishing, which pay “in agricultural modules” are not included; nor other activities that also continue to pay “in non-agricultural modules”, mainly small businesses, hotels, taxis, hairdressers (the latter are less than 400,000 in total).
On the other hand, we obtain the average profit from each activity by dividing the “performance” among the self-employed who do not have losses. This “positive return” is a figure from which current expenses (such as salaries, basic services, rents…), financial expenses, the contributions paid by the self-employed to Social Security (RETA) or depreciations have already been deducted. . An adjustment that is not applied is accumulated inflation, which from 2019 to 2022 was around 14.4%.
The combined profit of registrars and notaries increased by just over 20% from 2019 to 2020, with hardly any variation in the number of self-employed people who dedicate themselves to these professions. There are more notable jumps: almost 30% of the auditors, also with practically the same number of self-employed workers, staying on average at almost 140,000 euros, in the ‘top three’ of the self-employed who do best. The growth of dentists, computer scientists, programmers… in number and business volume also stands out.
“Computer programmers and analysts” went from 16,000 in Spain in 2019 to more than 20,000, with earnings of around 34,000 euros, on average. In advertising, from almost 23,000 self-employed workers to 32,000. Of course, with an average profit that does not reach 23,000 euros. Construction – in various activities -, lawyers and hairdressers are the self-employed who concentrate the most work on their own.
Among the self-employed workers who are doing worse, there are many related to artistic activities. Although it must be understood that these activities are usually complementary to people who have other jobs, as happens to referees, beekeepers or certain journalists, among others. The data is worrying for small stores, hairdressers, or part of the hospitality industry.
Finally, the Tax Agency statistics allow us to analyze which activities suffer a higher “failure rate”. Or what is the same, they do not achieve “positive performance”. Among those with higher percentages of self-employed workers in losses, explanations must also be sought, in some cases, in second occupations, even some related to hobbies, which are compensated by main jobs.
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