The Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration reduces to 5,000 the benefits for cessation of activity of the self-employed whose review has concluded with a denial. According to data provided to La Vanguardia by the department directed by Elma Saiz, of the total of almost 1.5 million benefits, only 0.4% have been denied at this time for not proving compliance with the requirements for access to it. .

The Government concludes that the report from the Court of Accounts that was known last week and in which it was noted that thousands of self-employed people would have to return 550 million in aid during Covid was prepared in advance of the deployment of the benefit review process. These checks began in September.

With data from the end of December, the review process has already reached 93% of benefits, around 1.24 million. Of them, 94% have already concluded with a definitive recognition of the benefit.

The rest of the reviews are currently pending hearing. Specifically, Social Security has requested additional information from beneficiaries to verify compliance with the requirements for their perception.

The average benefit paid for the cessation of activity to the self-employed was 2,513 euros, to which an additional 1,007 euros were added as exemption from Social Security contributions. The expenditure was 5.2 billion.

The report of the supervisory court pointed out, for its part, three large groups of self-employed workers who could have been affected by a hypothetical non-compliance with the requirements. On the one hand, 125,000 beneficiaries who received 119.5 million who would not comply with the necessary obligations; another 156,000 self-employed workers who received 386 million and whose activity would not have an associated National Classification of Economic Activities (CNAE) code; and a third group of 69,269 beneficiaries with a fee exemption of 41.6 million euros who would have incurred non-compliance and incidents related to the management and control procedure of these exemptions.

The Government considers these conclusions prior to its verification work.