The Supreme Court guarantees that the self-employed can deduct work meals even if they do not close any business in them

The self-employed may deduct the work meals they carry out with their clients, regardless of whether or not they agree to any collaboration contract. This was determined by the Supreme Court in a ruling issued last March, which was revealed this Friday by the AutonomosyEmprendedor.es portal, and to which EL PAÍS had access. In it, it breaks with the doctrine on which the Treasury had been considering these expenses non-deductible, since it understood that they were not directly related to the activity carried out by the self-employed worker.

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The paradigm shift in the assimilation of these expenses is housed in the consideration that the Supreme Court makes of them, and which it now places under the umbrella that its objective is "to achieve a better business result". "Therefore, those expenses that are donations or liberalities are deductible" - this consideration was what prevented them from being deducted - "colloquially known as attention to clients or to the staff itself". It ends, therefore, with the need required by the Treasury to present proof of income to recognize the work nature of that meeting.

"What this sentence offers is legal certainty," says Lorenzo Amor, president of the National Federation of Associations of Autonomous Workers (ATA). “Until now, when a self-employed person was subject to an inspection, many times the justification for the expenses of the meals depended on the particular criteria of the person who carried out that inspection,” he emphasizes. "Now the Supreme establishes the concrete way in which this must be done."

From now on, to accredit the meeting, the presentation of a text message or by WhatsApp, an email ―in which the client is informed of the desire to agree on a meeting in the form of food―, a phone call, or with demonstrate that the other person belongs to the usual portfolio of clients. “That it be made clear which are the ways by which it can be accredited is essential, because it is precisely this that gives legal certainty to the self-employed”, affects Amor.

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Future result

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In the ruling, the Supreme Court understands that although work lunches, gifts to clients or promotional expenses do not seek "a direct and immediate achievement of the best results", by their very nature and characteristics "they pursue an indirect and future result ”. Reason why they can be correlated with income. "Customer and supplier service fundamentally seeks to retain each other for the future," he adds.

Although from ATA they do not specify if with this change in regulations the self-employed who had not been allowed to deduct a series of expenses for these concepts will be able to claim them retroactively, they do consider it feasible for all those who have appealed the resolutions of the Treasury and that are still pending resolution.

However, they do regret that many self-employed workers – according to the latest data from the Ministry of Social Security, in June there were 3,320,983 average affiliates, 13,045 more than the previous month – are fighting to achieve recognition as work expenses for all those disbursements derived from the adaptation to teleworking. "Because they are not the ones who have voluntarily decided to work remotely, but rather it has been something imposed," says Amor.

See the sentence in which the Supreme Court guarantees that the self-employed can deduct work meals. If you cannot see the image correctly, please download the PDF document here.