What a family collaborator is in Spain

The short answer

A family collaborator is the relative who works in another relative's business and whom Spanish Social Security puts in the self-employed regime instead of treating as an employee. It is not a separate regime, and not a box anyone ticks on a registration form: it is a consequence of four facts, and all four have to hold.

What almost no guide states is where they are written down. The article that includes the person does not set them out: letter k) of article 305.2 of the Social Security Act merely names "the spouse and the relatives of the self-employed worker who, in accordance with article 12.1 and with paragraph 1 of this article, carry out work habitually and are not considered employees".² Everything that decides the answer is one article away.

The four conditions, and they are in article 12.1

Article 12.1 says that the following shall not be considered employees, save evidence to the contrary: "the spouse, the descendants, ascendants and other relatives of the employer, by blood or marriage up to and including the second degree and, where applicable, by adoption, occupied in their workplace or workplaces, when they live in their household and are dependent on them".¹

Read slowly, that is four requirements and not one:

They are cumulative. One failing is enough for the presumption not to apply, and then there is nothing to place in the self-employed regime at all: the relationship falls back to the general rule and is an employment contract. A child who works with their father every day but has their own home and their own finances is not a family collaborator, however much the business is a family one.

The second degree takes in siblings, grandparents and grandchildren, and the reference to marriage brings the spouse's relatives in at that same degree. From the third degree on, a cousin or an uncle, the law does not reach.

It is a presumption, not a label

The three words almost everyone skips when quoting article 12.1 are "save evidence to the contrary".¹ The rule does not declare the family member to be self-employed: it presumes they are not an employee and admits proof of the opposite.

The difference matters because it changes what can be done with the answer. Where the relationship really has subordination and dependence, with imposed hours, a wage and subjection to the employer's authority, there is something to prove to the Tesorería General de la Seguridad Social rather than a default classification to accept. A presumption can be argued with; a rule cannot.

A child under thirty has a second route, and it costs the dole

There is one way out written into the law and it is narrow. Additional provision 10 of Act 20/2007, echoed in article 12.2 of the Social Security Act, lets autónomos "hire, as employees, children under 30 years of age, even if they live with them", and sets the price in the same sentence: "unemployment cover shall be excluded from the protection afforded to family members so hired".⁵

Three things there are worth reading carefully.

The first is the age: past thirty the route reopens only on one of the three disability grounds the provision itself lists, and they are specific recognised grades rather than a general assessment.⁵

The second is who it names. It says "children". A spouse of twenty-five, or a parent, has no equivalent route at all: for them the only way out remains the evidence to the contrary of article 12.1.

And the third is that it displaces nothing. The verb is "may": it is an option for the business owner, not an automatic reclassification. A twenty-seven-year-old who meets the four conditions is a family collaborator, and at the same time their mother could hire them as an employee. Both are true at once, and the choice has different consequences for their protection.

What it costs: the floor yes, the deduction no

Here is the asymmetry that separates a collaborator from an ordinary autónomo, and from a company owner too. Two rules of article 308 share out the consequences and they do not share them alike.

Rule 4 of article 308.1.a) expressly names "the family members … under article 305.2.k), as well as … letters b) and e)", and forbids them to choose a monthly contribution base below the minimum for contribution group 7 of the General Regime.³ For 2026 article 3 of Order PJC/297/2026 sets that base at 1,424.40 euros a month.⁶

Rule 2 of article 308.1.c) cuts the generic-expense deduction from 7 % to 3 %, but only "in the case of … letters b) and e) of article 305.2".³ Letter k) is not there. A family collaborator keeps the 7 %.

Three letters in one rule, two in the other, fifteen lines apart in the same article. It is the kind of detail that decides a figure and that any summary loses.

And there is a third rule that lives only in the annual Order: its article 18.4 names letter k) again and lets these workers "keep the provisional contribution base in force in 2025 through 2026" instead of applying the floor.⁶

The flat rate is closed, and what stands in its place is something else

Paragraph 11 of article 38 ter of Act 20/2007 is literal: "The contribution reductions provided for in this article shall not apply to family members of self-employed workers by blood or marriage up to and including the second degree".⁵

In other words: the reduced rate that anyone else registering as self-employed for the first time receives is not an option for a collaborating family member. It is not a requirement that can be met, it is an exclusion by reason of kinship.

What stands in its place is article 35, which gives relief of 50 % for the first eighteen months and 25 % for the six that follow, with one hard condition: not having been registered in the self-employed regime "in the five immediately preceding years".⁴

And the relief is not a percentage of what you pay

This is the part no page on this subject states, and it is where the 2023 reform changed the sense of the rule without changing the percentages.

The current wording of article 35 computes that 50 % and that 25 % on "the common-contingency contribution corresponding to the minimum contribution base of band 1 of the general table of bases, in accordance with rule 1 of article 308.1.a)".⁴ The earlier wording, which the consolidated text still prints below it, said something different: "the contribution resulting from applying the corresponding rate in force at any given time to the minimum base".

The difference is that the percentage no longer moves with what the person actually contributes. And because the group 7 floor obliges them to contribute far above band 1 of the general table, the result is a fixed discount against a contribution they do not choose.

It is also worth not confusing the two minimum bases in play. Article 35 cites rule 1, which is the one for the general table; the reduced table has its own band 1, lower, and is the one used by anyone expecting to earn below the first band.³ Taking that as the reference would cut the relief by more than eighty euros a month.

A worked example with real numbers

A 27-year-old daughter works every day in her mother's business, lives with her and depends on her. The four conditions of article 12.1 hold, so she is a family collaborator under letter k), and the answer is open to evidence to the contrary.

Her base cannot fall below 1,424.40 euros a month. At the 2026 total rate of 31.50 % that is 448.69 euros of contribution. An ordinary autónoma on the same monthly income of 900 euros would contribute on 718.95 euros and pay 226.47 euros: 222.22 euros a month less and 2,666.64 euros a year less, for the same work and the same income. The collaborator does keep the 7 % deduction, which a company owner would not.

She is shut out of the flat rate. In exchange, article 35 gives her 50 % of the common-contingency contribution on band 1 of the general table: a base of 950.98 euros, a contribution of 269.13 euros, and so 134.57 euros a month for eighteen months and 67.28 euros for six more. That is 2,825.94 euros over twenty-four months.

And because she is a child under thirty, her mother could hire her as an employee instead of registering her as a collaborator. That contract would contribute under the General Regime, with the small print that it carries no unemployment cover.

The three lists of family members do not match

They are worth reading side by side, because each names a different group and the difference is not cosmetic.

The registered partner appears in article 35 and appears in neither article 12.1 nor letter k).⁴¹ Article 35 even goes on to define one, and to ask for a municipal certificate and five years of stable cohabitation, or entry in a regional or municipal register.

What follows from that mismatch we do not resolve here, because the text does not resolve it: none of the three rules explains how a registered partner who is not a "relative" of the owner enters the self-employed regime in the first place. It is exactly the kind of question worth taking to the Tesorería General before signing a registration, and not after.