If the businessmen shouted to heaven for the 8.6% increase in the maximum contribution bases for Social Security next year, the Minister of Inclusion and Social Security, José Luis Escrivá, has anticipated what is coming in the near future: an annual increase according to inflation plus an additional addition. This extra surcharge is the one that will be tried to agree with the social agents before the end of the year to meet one of the objectives of the recovery plan, the "stopping" of pensions. An operation that includes both raising the contributions of the highest salaries, as well as increasing future perception.
What Escrivá has indicated today is his intention to increase the maximum bases each year based on inflation. In other words, what he has done by 2023 will be the norm. "It has always been like this and what we are looking for is predictability," said the minister, adding that this increase is within normal limits. And regarding the harsh statement with which the employers responded, he added that "it is disconcerting and surprising... .what we want is to break with a past of continuous surprises".
What he has acknowledged is that he did not formally inform the CEOE about this 8.6% increase in the maximum bases that will apply from January. “Perhaps we have taken something that seemed obvious for granted,” they say in the ministry, insisting that, although in this process there is no established procedure for dialogue with social agents, as in the case of the SMI, they have been talking about the issue for weeks. .
This increase in the contribution for the maximum bases, which applies from January, affects 1,100,000 workers, those who earn more than 54,000 euros gross per year. It represents an increase of 100 euros per month for the employer and 20 euros for the worker.
Precisely, this increase in the maximum bases is one of the elements, although not the main one, that contributes to the 8.4% increase in social contributions that the budgets forecast for next year. Specifically, it represents 0.4% of this increase.
More than half of the increase of 8.6% corresponds to the increase in the contribution bases, which also includes the maximums. Then, we must add two more points that come from the surcharge established by the Intergenerational Equity Mechanism, and the remaining 2.6% comes from the improvement of the labor market, which entails more collection.
This is for next year. For the following it is at stake and soon in negotiation with the social agents to "unstop" the pensions. Escrivá has given a key today, it is that the contribution of high incomes will increase with inflation, plus a supplement that will try to agree. In return, of course, they will also have a larger pension when the time comes.
