Slovak Business Alliance (PAS) distances itself from support for employers who motivate their employees to continue working for them based on a contract with a self-employed person and thus give up their legal protection resulting from the employment-employee relations anchored in the Labor Code. PAS was prompted to such statement by the Labor Ministry, after PAS pointed out at the end of July to a possibility to earn more as self-employed person than working as an employee in a job equally paid. "The Alliance considers as unrealistic, ineffective and unjust the effort of some politicians to order through law, which jobs can be done by self-employed persons and which jobs can be done only by employees," said PAS. PAS agrees that a businessman, who takes higher risk, works more and bears greater responsibility, should earn more. "However, we do not agree that already a starting line should put anyone at a disadvantage. Each legal form of work, including the job of an employee or a self-employed person, has its advantages and disadvantages. They should not be compensated by the state but by the market in the form of suitable financial evaluation," PAS said.
PAS agrees with the opinion of the Labor Ministry that a "real and right solution is that working people, who do not want to become self-employed, are subject to full legal protection." Contrary to the ministry, PAS, however, thinks that this state can be reached only if there is harmonization in taxation and payment of social and health insurance contributions for both employees and self-employed persons. According to PAS, the Labor Ministry thinks that this can be reached by adopting a law or by persuading employees not to succumb the pressure of becoming unwillingly self-employed persons. "The development after the revised Labor Code was passed showed that the Labor Ministry failed to widen the group of forced employees, since a relative growth of self-employed persons was higher than the growth of the number of employees, " said the Business Alliance.
In their economically active lives, self-employed persons can earn by as much as SKK 5 million (EUR 166,000) more than employed persons for an equally paid job, while having the same pension. An analysis by the Slovak Business Alliance (PAS) shows that on the same labor costs, a self-employed persons pays less than half the volume of taxes and social security contributions, compared with an employee. Thus net income of a self-employed person is 39 percent higher than the net income of an employee. Owners of a one-person limited liability company in the same conditions would have an income of 32 percent higher. Nonetheless, self-employed persons and limited liability company owners must keep in mind that if they want to receive the same pension as employees, they have to save and accumulate part of their incomes, for example through investments on equity markets. This difference in net incomes is caused by the current tax and social contributions system, which creates space for various speculations. PAS is thus suggesting a gradual harmonization of calculations and tariffs of taxes and contributions for employees and self-employed persons, in order to equalize conditions for individual business forms.