If you are self-employed, you have until January 31st to submit your annual Social Security declaration. Find out what you have to do by the end of the month.
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The deadline for delivering annual social security statement ends January 31. For those who have to do this procedure for the first time, it is natural that some doubts may arise.
First of all because, when you access your Social Security Direct page, there is no indication to submit the declaration, not even a button with the instruction “deliver” or “confirm”. But, after all, what statement is this? And how do you deliver?
The process is quite simple, actually, and you may not even have to do anything for your annual Social Security return to be filed. This is because it is not exactly a “delivery”, but a confirmation of income.
Who is obliged to deliver the declaration?
According to Social Security, the declaration must be delivered by self-employed workers who “have been obliged to deliver at least one quarterly statement relating to income obtained in the previous calendar year”.
So, and until January 31stthe amounts of income obtained from the production and sale of goods, provision of services or other income necessary for calculating the relevant income of self-employed workers must be confirmed.
Is important do not confuse this statement with the quarterly statementrelating to income obtained in the immediately preceding three months and which must be delivered by the end of January (reporting income from October, November and December 2022).
How do I submit the annual Social Security statement?
After accessing Social Security Direct with your password, you must select the tab Jobfollowed by Independent Workers.
The next step is to click on Quarterly declaration regime and then on Statements previous year. There you will find four fields, relating to the four quarters:
- 1st Quarter Statement: delivered in April (income January, February, March);
- 2nd Quarter Statement: delivered in July (April, May, June earnings);
- 3rd Quarter Statement: Due in October (July, August, September earnings).
- 4th Quarter Statement: Due in January (October, November, December earnings)
If you had no income, you will not have any declaration to consult or to correct. If, despite having no income, you have made voluntary contributions to Social Security, you can have a zero declaration. And in that case, you don’t have to do anything else.
For those who had income, and after seeing the fields relating to the four quarters, just open each of these statements and confirm that the amounts are correct.
If the quarterly statements were filed and that’s fine, too you don’t have to do anything else. Even because the site does not allow you any other option.
In that case, the annual Social Security declaration is validated and you will only have to think about it again next year.
What to do if you have incorrect values?
In fact, these are the only cases where you have to do something, and even then, it won’t be anything complicated either.
Just click on “Correct declaration” and, when seeing the values, rectify those that were not correct. Then just submit again.
I forgot to hand in a statement: what now?
It may also happen that, when consulting the quarterly statements, you notice that one is missing.
In this case, you must choose the field of the missing statement, select “register statement” and fill in the corresponding values.
What happens after submitting the declaration?
Social Security uses this annual statement – or income confirmation/correction – to see if there were differences in the amounts of the contributory obligation in the months in question.
If there are assessed contributions of a higher value, then you will have to pay the remaining amount until the February 22nd.
If you have paid more, “the amount will be considered for contributions in the following months”, according to the Social Security website. You can also request a refund of that money.
Article originally published in January 2020. Last updated in January 2023.
