Workers who are not up to date with the payment of their Social Security contributions when they were self-employed, that is, self-employed, may be denied a retirement pension, unless they regulate their situation within the period established after the so-called “invitation to payment” that will be sent to the administration. This is so, since this is established in article 47 of the General Social Security Law, which explains that to be entitled to the pension it is necessary that the deceased (the worker) is up to date with his contributions.
The reason for this obligation is that our pension system belongs to what is known as the “system contribution principle.” That is, self-employed workers are responsible for paying their own contributions to the General Treasury of Social Security, since they contribute towards their future retirement pension.
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In the case of self-employed workers (employees) it is different, since it is the employer or the company that has the responsibility of contributing for them, so this obligation falls on the company and the worker cannot be denied the pension, since it is not his obligation. For this reason, if a self-employed worker who contributes under the RETA (Special Regime for Self-Employed Workers) is not up to date with his contributions, he cannot access the contributory retirement pension even if he meets the age and years of contributions requirements, even if he reaches more than 40 years of contributions.
Failure to comply with this requirement causes the incompatibility to arise and a request to be automatically denied. Now, Social Security allows contributions to be updated through a mechanism so that the pension is not denied and so the self-employed worker has the right to the pension.
What happens if I request the pension and I have debts?
If when requesting the retirement pension the worker has debts, before denying it, Social Security will activate article 47 of the General Social Security Law. This allows you to activate what is known as the “invitation to payment”.
The procedure is simple. When the worker requests the pension and has debts due to non-payment of contributions, Social Security notifies him and allows a period of 30 calendar days to make the payment effective. If you pay, the INSS will approve the pension, but if you do not, the application will be rejected and you will be notified.
In other words, the “invitation to payment” is the only opportunity offered by the law to regularize the situation without losing the right to the pension on the requested date.
Real example of how a worker lost his pension for not being up to date with the contributions
These situations occur and to see this we can see the example of Felicísimo, a 72-year-old self-employed person with more than 33 years of contributions, who requested his retirement, but was denied due to a debt of almost 14,000 euros in unpaid contributions as a self-employed person. Social Security sent him the “invitation to payment” giving him 30 days to regularize his situation, but he did not pay the debt within that period, later arguing that the non-payments corresponded to companies he managed and not to him personally.
Although a court initially agreed with him on the basis that the right to a pension is imprescriptible, the Superior Court of Justice of Extremadura revoked that ruling and denied the benefit. The court determined that, since he was not up to date with payments, the pending contributions could not be computed, causing him to not comply with the “specific deficiency” (having contributed 2 years within the last 15).
In this case the ruling was clear and explained that it is a mandatory requirement to be up to date with Social Security payments. Since Felicísimo did not make the payment, he lost his right to the pension at that time, explaining that non-prescribed debts cannot be ignored or compensated with retroactive effects once the administrative period has passed.