What a company-owner autónomo is in Spain

The short answer

A company-owner autónomo (autónomo societario in Spanish) is someone who provides services to a capital company and has effective control of it. It is not a separate regime from the RETA and not a box you tick: it follows from how much of the capital you hold and what role you play, and Spanish Social Security applies it on the facts.

What almost nobody says is that article 305.2.b) of the General Social Security Act does not have one threshold. It has three, and between them something more important than the percentage changes: who has to prove what.¹

Three thresholds, three legal forces

Letter b) of article 305.2 starts by describing who it reaches: those who carry out "the management functions that come with the office of board member or director, or provide other services for a capital company, for profit and on a habitual, personal and direct basis, provided they have effective control of it, whether direct or indirect".¹

It then says when effective control exists, on three levels.

Half the capital is a legal fiction. "It shall be understood, in every case, that such a circumstance arises when the worker's shares or holdings amount to at least half of the share capital." That "in every case" is not rhetoric: it is what makes the point undebatable. At 50 % or more no evidence helps, because the law has not opened the door to any.

Three circumstances are presumptions. "It shall be presumed, save evidence to the contrary, that the worker has effective control of the company" where half the capital is distributed among shareholders you live with and are related to by marriage or kinship up to the second degree; where your holding reaches "one third"; or where it reaches "one quarter" and you have been assigned management duties. Here you can prove otherwise, and that changes completely what can be done with the answer.

And below that there is no safe harbour. The paragraph closing letter b) says that "where the above circumstances do not apply, the authorities may prove, by any means of evidence, that the worker has effective control of the company". A 10 % shareholder who actually runs the business is not protected by the percentage.

The two consequences, and neither is the rate

A company-owner autónomo pays the same contribution rate as anyone else: 31.50 % of the base in 2026.⁴ Two other things change, and they sit in two different rules of the same article.

The floor on the base. Rule 4 of article 308.1.a) says you may not choose "a monthly contribution base lower than the one set by the relevant State Budget Act as the minimum common-contingency contribution base for workers in the General Social Security Regime of contribution group 7", and adds that the final base after reconciliation may not be lower either.² For 2026 article 3 of Orden PJC/297/2026 sets that base at 1,424.40 euros a month.³

The figure reads better beside what an ordinary autónomo may choose: the reduced RETA table starts at a base of 653.59 euros and the first band of the general table at 950.98 euros.⁴ The group 7 floor sits 50 % above the second and more than twice above the first.

The generic-expense deduction. Rule 2 of article 308.1.c) applies "a generic-expense deduction of 7 per cent, except in the case of self-employed persons included in this special regime under letters b) and e) of article 305.2 of this Act, where the deduction shall be 3 per cent".² That deduction is what turns your net income into the figure that selects your band, so four points less is not only four points: at some income levels it moves you into a different band.

The asymmetry that is worth money

The two rules are in the same article and do not name the same list of letters.

The floor rule opens like this: "Relatives of self-employed persons included in this special regime under article 305.2.k), as well as self-employed persons included in this special regime under letters b) and e)…". Three letters: k), b) and e).

The deduction rule names two: b) and e).²

From that follows a result no guide states: a collaborating family autónomo, the one under letter k), is subject to the group 7 floor and keeps the 7 % deduction. And letters c) and d), industrial partners in partnerships and joint owners of a comunidad de bienes, appear in neither: they are in the RETA in their own right and neither the floor nor the 3 % reaches them.

One third is written twice and the two do not match

Here is the detail that separates this page from every other one on the subject, and it is checked by reading two articles of the same law.

Article 305.2.b).2 presumes control where the holding "is equal to or greater than one third" of the capital. One third is 33.33 %.

Article 308.1.c), rule 1, requires the contribution base to include "all gross income, in cash or in kind, deriving from the holding in the own funds" of entities in which you hold "a share equal to or greater than 33 % of the share capital or, holding the office of director, a share equal to or greater than 25 %".² Here the threshold is a round 33 %.

Between 33.00 % and 33.33 % the two articles say opposite things about the same person: the law does not presume that you control the company and does count the dividends it pays you. A tool that rounds "one third" to 33 loses that band entirely.

And the 25 % threshold does coincide in both rules, which makes it harder to read the other difference as simple drafting sloppiness.

Management duties are not the office of director

The two articles do not describe the role in the same words either. The one-quarter presumption asks for "management functions of the company". The dividend computation from 25 % asks for "the office of director".

A shareholder with 28 % who runs the business in fact and is not registered as a director at the Commercial Registry is therefore presumed a company owner by article 305 and outside the dividend computation of article 308. The statutory text does not say the two expressions mean the same thing and does not resolve what happens when they diverge. We flag it rather than invent an answer: this is exactly the case for an adviser.

Ninety days, not a year

None of this is triggered by holding shares for a day. Both rules use the same formula: it "shall suffice to have been registered for ninety days in this special regime, in any of the cases covered by those letters, during the period being reconciled".²

Below ninety days you keep the 7 % deduction and the minimum base of your own band.

And for 2026 there is a way out that sits not in the law but in the annual Orden. Article 18.4 of Orden PJC/297/2026, after confirming the list of letters k), b) and e), adds that these workers "may keep the provisional contribution base in force in 2025 during 2026, or the one resulting from applying rule 4 of article 308.1.a)".⁴ It is an option the LGSS does not grant, in the norm almost nobody reads.

A worked example with real numbers

A director holding 33 % of a Spanish limited company who earns 1,500 euros net a month.

They are a company owner by presumption: they hold more than one quarter of the capital and have management duties, so article 305.2.b).3 applies and they can rebut it with evidence to the contrary.

Because letter b) reaches them, the deduction is 3 %: 1,500 minus 45 is 1,455 euros of computable income, which falls in band 2 of the general table and carries a minimum base of 960.78 euros.

But the group 7 floor sits at 1,424.40 euros, so that is the base. At 31.50 %:

146.04 euros more every month and 1,752.48 euros more a year, on the same income. And at exactly 33 % they also sit in the band where article 308 already counts their dividends and article 305 does not yet presume they control the company.

What to do with this

Check which level you are on first, because that decides whether you can argue about it. Then see whether the floor really bites: above roughly 1,470 euros of monthly computable income your own band already requires a base above 1,424.40 euros and company-owner status does not raise your contribution. And if it does bite, you have the 2026 option in article 18.4 of the Orden.

Your status is decided by the Social Security Treasury on your actual circumstances, not by a calculator. This is educational information and does not constitute advice.