When will businesses with 3 to 9 employees be able to apply for the Kit Digital?

The Kit Digital grants for self-employed workers with between three and nine employees are just around the corner. Next July, the Government will launch the second call for applications for this aid to promote the digitalization of small businesses.

Although no specific date has yet been set, the expected dates for applying for the Kit Digital aid for Segments II and III have been announced.

Segment II businesses (small businesses with between 3 and 9 employees) are expected to be able to start applying for their Digital Voucher (Bono Digital) between June and July 2022.

The expected date for Segment III businesses (small businesses with between 0 and 2 employees) is between September and October 2022.

Calculating the number of employees.

To calculate the number of employees, you must take into account the days and hours for which contributions were paid throughout 2021. (A part-time employee counts as half an employee.)

If you want to calculate the number of employees, you must access the Social Security website and go to the Sistema RED section. There you will be able to view the “Average Registered Workforce Report” (“Informe plantilla media de trabajadores en alta”) and obtain all the data on your average workforce over a given period.

Requirements

Although the Kit Digital aid for entrepreneurs with fewer than ten employees will not be available until next month, and the exact requirements are therefore not yet known, they are expected to be very similar to those of the first call for businesses with more than 10 employees. The list of eligible expenses and services that may be contracted will be the same.

Whatever the purpose of the aid, one requirement recurs in all of them: the self-employed worker must be up to date with payments to Social Security and, in some cases, also to the tax authorities. Indeed, having debts with either of these two administrations has been one of the most frequent reasons why self-employed workers were unable to access the ICO-guaranteed loan lines during the pandemic, other aid, or even the extraordinary cessation-of-activity benefit. What is certain, according to the experts consulted by this publication, is that this condition will continue to apply both to the Kit Digital and to future subsidies.

Who is excluded from the Kit Digital?

The following may not be beneficiaries of the Digital Voucher:

• Individuals or legal entities that are Registered Digitalization Agents (Agentes Digitalizadores Adheridos), or those with which such agents contract or subcontract for the provision of digitalization solutions.

• Public-sector companies and public-law entities.

• Professional associations (Colegios profesionales), civil-law partnerships (sociedades civiles), joint ownership arrangements (comunidades de bienes), homeowners’ associations under the horizontal property regime, or any other type of economic unit or separate estate lacking legal personality

How to apply

SMEs and self-employed workers must apply for their Kit Digital Voucher through an applicant, legal representative, or authorized voluntary representative, exclusively by means of the automated form that will be made available on the Red.es e-office (Sede Electrónica).

This form will also be accessible from the Acelera Pyme portal and will include:

• Applicant’s tax identification number (NIF).

• Name of the individual or corporate name of the legal entity.

• Tax domicile of the individual or legal entity.

• Telephone number and contact details.

• Where applicable, the voluntary representative’s authorization.

Voluntary representatives must submit, together with the application, an authorization of voluntary representation. It can be downloaded from the Red.es e-office.

If there is any error in the application, the examining body (Órgano Instructor) will request that it be corrected by means of an electronic notification, and SMEs and self-employed workers will have 10 business days to remedy it.

Note that, as a step prior to applying for the aid to improve digital transformation, a self-diagnosis test will be carried out, which all SMEs will be able to access to find out their level of digitalization and identify the areas in which they need to improve. This test will be carried out on the Acelera Pyme platform.