The Finance Ministry released a study on falsely self-employed earlier this month, they estimated their total number in Slovakia at 100,000 and pointed out that the share of self-employed persons with one dominant client is the highest among EU countries. The ministerial Value for Money Unit considers the biggest problems to be circumvention of the Labour Code, distortion of the competitive environment and shortening of public finance ranging from €177 million to €251 million a year. Nevertheless, businesses and employers face completely different challenges - in particular, a shortage of employees and a disproportionately high tax and social security burden.
The study titled Looking for a Reliable Employee. Condition: Self-employment (in Slovak: Hľadáme Spoľahlivého Zamestnanca. Podmienka: Na Živnosť) also illustrates the issue by specific examples from published job advertisements.
It does not focus on the relevant legislation and case law, even though these challenges may be crucial in practice. But let’s take it one step at a time. The most famous employer of falsely self-employed in our region was the Czech construction entrepreneur Miroslav Švarc, who prospered in 1990s also thanks to tax and social security savings through “innovative employment” of persons as self-employed.
Soon after, the “inventor” of false self-employment had a dispute with authorities, after which he became infamous, and was also sentenced to imprisonment. As a result, .
