The future regulation that must develop the RETA gateway is shaping up to be the piece that will truly determine if the reform is usable: it will have to establish who can join in practice, how to apply, how funds from alternative mutual societies will be disbursed, and by what formula they will be converted into contributions to the Special Regime for Self-Employed Workers (RETA). The text emerging from the Senate obliges the Government to approve this regulation within a maximum period of three months, although this clause still needs to be confirmed by Congress next week. Once the regulation comes into force, mutual members will have one year to apply for the transfer of their economic rights to the RETA.
What is RETA?
The Special Regime for Self-Employed Workers (RETA) is the Social Security system into which, as a general rule, individuals who carry out an economic activity on their own account in Spain must contribute. Through their contributions, self-employed workers generate rights to benefits such as retirement, temporary and permanent disability, cessation of activity, maternity and paternity, or benefits for risk during pregnancy.
Since 2023, RETA has operated with a contribution system based on real income, whereby the monthly fee is calculated based on the self-employed worker's net income, distributed across different tiers. The objective is for contributions to be more precisely aligned with the income earned and for future benefits to be more closely related to the economic activity carried out.
What the Government will have to regulate exactly
The bill and parliamentary notes detail which aspects are left to regulatory development, particularly through the new transitional provision forty-seventh of the General Social Security Law (LGSS) and the approved transactional amendments. The decree must specify the operational access criteria, the one-year application period, and the administrative procedure: which body processes each application, what documentation the mutual member must provide, and what response times apply between mutual societies and the General Treasury of Social Security (TGSS).
The decision the Government has to make is important because the gateway to the RETA is the legal mechanism that will allow professionals who contribute or have contributed to alternative mutual funds to Social Security —such as lawyers, solicitors, or some engineers— to transfer to the Special Regime for Self-Employed Workers (RETA) the economic rights accumulated in those entities. The objective is that this capital can be converted, as determined by future regulations, into years of contributions recognized by Social Security, thus facilitating access to benefits such as retirement, without losing the contributions made during their time in the mutual fund.
How will the transferred capital be calculated and converted?
The law is limited to speaking of "accumulated economic rights" in the mutual fund, but it transfers to the regulations the definition of which items form part of this capital, how they are valued and on what date, and how an orderly withdrawal of funds is articulated that does not harm either those who leave the mutual fund or those who remain in it.
The conversion into contributed periods will be made by taking as a reference the minimum contribution base that would have corresponded if the professional had been in the RETA, "under the terms to be determined by regulation", according to the text approved by the Congress of Deputies. The updating index for this minimum base and the equivalence coefficient remain to be specified: the Senate has recovered a range between 0.67 and 0.87 to modulate the conversion of capital into contributed years.
For mutual fund members aged 52 or over as of December 31, 2026, the law also sets a one-to-one conversion rule "for the exclusive purposes of the percentage applicable to the regulatory base", whose integration with the rest of the calculation also corresponds to the regulations to clarify. The years in which the mutual fund was mandatory and substitutive will be recognized as time of affiliation and registration in the RETA, although the economic calculation of these contributions is also referred to regulatory development.
Tax exemption and coordination with mutual funds
The amendments incorporated during the processing already stipulate that the transfer of economic rights to the RETA will have no impact on personal income tax (IRPF), but the regulations will have to specify the mechanics of this exemption, including communications between mutual funds and the Tax Agency.
The nineteenth additional provision, modified during the processing, also requires the procedure to be articulated by regulatory means for Treasury to provide mutual societies with the necessary information to calculate contributions based on income, as well as the obligations for semiannual reports and reinforced supervision mechanisms towards the General Directorate of Insurance.
The three-month deadline, pending Congress's approval
The regulation's timeline has been one of the most contentious points of the process. In Committee, Congress approved a compromise amendment in June from Sumar, ERC, and EH Bildu that set three months from the law's entry into force for regulatory development, although technical reports warned that this deadline had disappeared in later versions of the draft.
The Senate has again explicitly introduced on July 9 the obligation for the Government to approve the regulation within a maximum of three months from the law's entry into force, a point that now corresponds to the Congress to ratify, which will have to vote whether to accept or reject the set of amendments introduced by the Upper House.
Two scenarios on the table
If Congress confirms the three-month deadline: the law would enter into force the day after its publication in the BOE and the Government would have three months from that date to approve the regulation.
If Congress rejects that amendment: the mandate to develop the gateway by regulation would still exist, but without a fixed legal deadline, a scenario that professional groups criticize because it would leave the effective application of the gateway to the Executive's discretion.