How to invoice if you are an autonomous psychologist in Spain?
Psychology is a science responsible for the study and analysis of the psyche and the processes that are part of it. But it is also a profession that requires great effort, perseverance and dedication, being the figure of the psychologist that of a professional whose services imply an economic retribution.
Many professionals work for public administration or get hired by a company or institute of psychology, but the truth is that the vast majority of psychologists must establish themselves as autonomous professionals in order to subsist, and for this they must be able to bill their services. How to invoice if you are an autonomous psychologist in Spain? Let's see it throughout this article.
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Requirements to start billing as a freelance psychologist
Before starting to deal with patients or users and be able to make invoices, it is necessary to comply with a series of prerequisites. And is that To be autonomous and to be able to bill as such it will be necessary to carry out a series of previous steps .
First of all, in order to work as a psychologist, it is essential to get registered first, and that membership is a legal requirement to be able to practice. In addition to this it will be necessary to be registered in the Social Security.
Done this and whenever we have the necessary qualifications to practice, we must register as autonomous in the Social Security and Treasury, censuring us in the Tax on Economic Activities or IAE and filling out form 037 of self-employed (with epigraph 776) . Once this is done, we can start billing.
From then on we will have to pay the monthly fee for freelancers , as well as to present the model 130 of fractionated payment of IRPF on a quarterly basis and the 303 VAT in case your professional activity is not exempt from this (also quarterly). It will also be necessary to have a fiscal domicile, necessary to be able to perform the billing and to fill in the previous forms.
However, first of all, we must bear in mind that if we work for an employee contracted by a company, it will not be necessary to carry out the billing procedures given that we will receive a salary from the company in question. We only need to invoice if we offer our services as freelancers or freelancers.
However, Being linked to a company is not the same as being hired : it is usual for companies to employ self-employed professionals who bill their services, in which case they would be working on their own and it will be necessary to do so.
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Other requirements to work in the clinic
In the case of being working in the field of the clinic, it will also be necessary to qualify as a health center (even if we carry out the professional activity in our own home), something that includes another series of procedures linked to the center and to the professional activity itself . The specific procedures will depend on whether we establish ourselves or create a company .
Focusing on the first of the cases, we will have to have a book of income and expenses, the opening or activity license, the registration in the waste rate, the quarterly rental statement (model 115 in the Treasury) and if we hire someone we will also have to fill in the 111 model, also quarterly.
As for the center, it will be necessary to obtain, as we have said, the sanitary registry. For this it will be necessary to make an application request addressed to the "Service d'Autorització i Registre d'Entitats, Centers i Serveis Sanitaris", to pay the fees, to possess and present a rental contract of the property or the copy of the deeds, the DNI , and the technical project signed by a technician (including technical memory and functional memory)
It will be necessary to have a space enabled and free of architectural barriers, an office of at least 8 square meters. It can only be shared by other professionals with the same activity and should be accessible from a public space, having a reception and waiting area, consulting and having a service for patients and companions.
We must also be registered with the Spanish Agency for Data Protection (AGPD) in order to communicate and record the type of data with which we will work, provide us with security measures for the treatment of patient data, have complaint forms and an informative sign in this regard, perform the prevention of occupational hazards and have a civil liability insurance.
Make your own invoice as a psychologist in Spain
Per se, the completion of the invoice is relatively simple , it being only necessary to take into account the different elements that must be included.
First of all, it should be made clear that the document we are making is an invoice, and it must be visible in the header. After this we must incorporate the invoice number that we are issuing, so that they can be ordered sequentially through time.
We must also incorporate the date of issue of the invoice in question. It may also be advisable to enter the time, especially when we have several invoices of the same date.
Next we will have to indicate the basic data of both the issuer and the recipient of the invoice , the issuer being the professional and the receiver the client or patient.
In the case of the issuer, we must put our name and surnames, DNI (or CIF in case of being a company) and fiscal address including population, province and zip code. In the case of the receiver must include name and surname, DNI and address or fiscal address (including also population, province and zip code). If the recipient is a company instead of the DNI, the CIF will be required, as well as the company name.
After this identification data, we will proceed to describe briefly the services for which we are charging as well as the number of units of the service we have provided (for example we have done three therapy sessions) and the unit price or price of each of these services. It is also possible to indicate what we consider a unit, such as one hour of therapy. We will indicate next the subtotal or the taxable base, that is to say the total of the price charged in gross.
Now we must go to indicate the taxes that will be charged to us from this invoice: VAT and IRPF. Now, you have to keep in mind that the amount and the percentage of these taxes can vary enormously . These deductions have to be subtracted from the invoice of the tax base itself, indicating both the percentage and the total of the amount in € withheld. After this we will record the Total of the invoice, which will be what we will perceive once the relevant withholdings have been deducted.
Finally, we must record the ownership of the data file indicating who is responsible, the use that will be given and a short list of user rights. Further, in the case of being exempt from withholdings we must also mention it on the invoice, indicating to which law this exemption is due.
VAT on invoicing: exemptions
One of the main taxes that most professionals must take into account when billing is the Value Added Tax or VAT, having to calculate and pay the percentage corresponding to the professional activity in each of the invoices.
However, it must be taken into account that certain professional activities are not taxed by the Value Added Tax or VAT , being the professions of the sanitary field (as long as they are recognized by the administration) exempt of this tax in their billing.
And is that according to Article 20.3. of the law 37/1992 of Value Added Tax, assistance to natural persons by medical or health professionals is exempt from VAT, including the figure of the psychologist in said consideration. This means that if you are a psychologist specialized in clinical psychology or a general sanitary psychologist (whether for having completed the PIR examinations, having completed the Master's Degree in General Health Psychology or having received habilitation) and your professional performance is based on health performance you will not have to invoice the VAT.
This also extends, according to point 20.9 of the same law, to activities linked to the education of children and youth , including school and university education or the training of professionals. In other words, if in the same context your economic activity leads you to perform some type of training related to the field of health, it is also exempt from VAT.
However, the fact that these activities are exempt from VAT does not imply that in the rest we should not pay, being necessary to take into account that if we perform another type of activity we must include VAT in the invoice. In any case, even if we are exempt, we must indicate both the percentage and the total amount of money withheld (in this case, 0).
The case of the IRPF: are there always retentions?
The other big tax to take into account when billing is the Income Tax of the Physical Persons . As in the case of VAT, this tax can also be found with exemptions. And is that any invoice that has a non-autonomous individual as a receiver will not require the withholding of personal income tax, so if the invoice is made to a particular patient we will not have to subtract it from our bill.
In the event that our services are offered to a company, institution or autonomous the invoice will be recorded by the IRPF, being necessary to indicate the percentage retained and the amount. In general, 15% is usually applied, although the first three years it is possible that the retention is only 7%.
