We Printed Four Autónomo Payment Figures in February. All Four Need Correcting.

Spain kept the 2026 income bands and their minimum contribution bases at 2025 levels. Every one of the four monthly payments we printed for autónomos — self-employed workers in February was still wrong.

In February we reported the freeze and told you your cuota — monthly social-security payment was not going up this year. The freeze was real. The figures we printed under it were not, and how they went wrong is worth two minutes of your attention, because anyone who pays this bill can make the same mistake.

Minimum monthly payment per band, our February figure against the official 2026 one. Confirmed August 2026 against Social Security's own calculator.

Under €670 net a month: we printed €230. It is €205.88.

€1,300 to €1,500: we printed €294. It is €302.65.

€1,700 to €1,850: we printed €350. It is €360.29.

Over €6,000: we printed €530. The minimum is €607.35.

The middle two tell you how it happened. A cuota is a percentage of a contribution base, and the standard 2026 rate, before discounts and special cases, is 31.5%: a 30.6% base rate plus a 0.9% pension surcharge. Multiply those two bases by 30.6% alone, and you get €294.00 and €350.00, to the cent. Our read: that arithmetic dropped the surcharge entirely, and it was our arithmetic either way. The other two figures do not reconcile with the official 2025 or 2026 minimum tables at all. Wrong the morning we sent them, no excuses.

The surcharge is the Mecanismo de Equidad Intergeneracional — intergenerational equity surcharge, MEI on your paperwork, written into pension law in 2023 with a fixed escalator. It went from 0.8% to 0.9% this January and reaches 1% in January 2027. At the bases above, that January step cost between €0.65 and €1.93 a month. About the price of a bad coffee, so we will not be building a theory on it. The €8 to €10 of MEI sitting inside the middle minimums is the total surcharge, not the rise. The distinction matters if you are comparing this year's debit with last year's.

One more thing February left crooked: the income-based system itself. We wrote as if it had been postponed wholesale. It has been running since January 2023, and you are in it now, band, base and all. 2032 is when the transition to the definitive model ends, not when anything starts.

The tarifa plana — flat-rate starter contribution is not €80 and then €160, as we printed. Under current guidance it is €80 a month plus the surcharge, €88.64 all in, for the first 12 months, extendable for another 12 if you declare forecast earnings below the minimum wage. The €160 for months 13 to 18 was wrong.

On invoicing software: February said the certified-invoicing rules had slipped to July 2027 for autónomos, with "real-time invoice reporting" beginning then. The current decree splits the dates: 1 January 2027 for businesses that file corporate income tax, 1 July 2027 for everyone else in scope, including autónomos who use invoicing software. And real-time transmission is one compliance mode, not the rule. Compliant software can instead keep tamper-evident records locally under stricter controls.

Social Security's official cuota calculator shows the 2026 figure for any band in about two minutes: pick your expected net monthly income and read off the band, the base and the payment. It shows a range for each band; the low end, at the minimum base, is what our four examples use. No login. It is informative only and leaves out any discounts, so it may not match your debit to the cent. What it gives you is the working.

Three numbers belong in your next email to your gestor — licensed tax-and-paperwork agent: your expected net monthly income, the base you are registered at, and what actually leaves your account each month. If your partner normally deals with the gestor, those three lines are the whole brief.

A base change requested between now and 31 October takes effect on 1 November, so it changes what you pay in November and December. The annual true-up settles the year as a whole either way. And if the person filing for you claims the regulated title, the Colegio Oficial de Gestores Administrativos de Málaga, Calle Babel 5, Málaga, can confirm whether they are actually on the register.

The wider system, from bands to the regularización — year-end true-up that squares what you paid against what you earned, is in our autónomo guide.

Two for the gestor email:

"¿Cuál es mi base de cotización actual?" — "What is my current contribution base?"

"¿Qué cuota saldría con mis ingresos previstos?" — "What contribution would result from my expected income?"

The bands and minimum bases froze, and our four figures were wrong anyway. The 2026 MEI step added about €1 at the two middle minimums; two of our figures appear to have omitted MEI entirely, while the other two do not match the official 2025 or 2026 minimums. Use the calculator now, and if your registered base is wrong, a request by 31 October changes November and December; the annual regularización settles the full year.

See you on the paseo — A. and the WaypointSur team, redoing our maths and hopefully not having to pay any fines.