As announced in previous RED News Bulletins (2008/01 and 2008/04), as of 1 January 2009, Royal Decree 475/2007 of 13 April, approving the 2009 National Classification of Economic Activities, will enter into force.

For companies for which according to the comparison tables between the CNAE 93 and CNAE09 prepared by the National Institute of Statistics, the current code CNAE93 is broken down into several CNAE09 codes, the correct code will need to be entered by the employer.

This code must be entered before 1 November 2008, given that if this date arrives and it has not been entered, the Treasury will perform an automatic conversion, assigning the code that corresponds to the contribution rate for WRI for the highest of the possible values to which it could correspond.

This conversion will be done in November, and the value assigned through the RED System transactions in which this information appears, as well as in the specific transaction of the CNAE09 query/entry can be checked.

The RED News Bulletin 2008/04 of 26 May provided information on the new feature for identifying some of the reasons that prevent employers from being eligible for Social Security benefits, either due to failing to meet one of the requirements, or due to incurring some type of exclusion from the entitlement to the benefit.

This identification is done via the 'Loss of benefits indicator' field.

The entry in this field is done automatically by the General Treasury of the Social Security.

The current Employment Promotion Programme, described in Article 6.2 of Law 43/2006, states that companies that have terminated or terminate contracts with allowances due to fair or unfair dismissal, or collective dismissal are excluded from receiving the benefits applicable to this programme for a period of 12 months.

The exclusion affects the same number of contracts as the number of terminated contracts. This exclusion does not result in the permanent loss of benefits, but rather a suspension for the period between the start date of a contract's allowances and the completion date of the 12-month exclusion. The employer regains eligibility for benefits after this 12-month period and the suspension period is considered to be complete.

These situations will be identified with the value 08 – Termination of contracts with allowances during last 12 months, in the 'Loss of benefits indicator' field.

This value must be entered by the users.

Thus, when you want to enter a contract with allowances but the company is in this situation, the entry should be made including all of the details of the desired contract with allowances and the value 08 in the 'Loss of benefits indicator' field. This will mean that the relevant benefits are not applied at this time.

This entry will be affiliation for initial contracts and change contract for conversions.

Once the benefit exclusion period is complete, a contract change entry will be made, including all the details of the previously entered contract and the value 00 in the 'Loss of benefits indicator' field. The system will automatically calculate the applicable allowances.

Initially this feature will only be available through On-Line Affiliation.

It will soon be implemented in batch mode. The implementation date will be announced in an upcoming RED News Bulletin.

The 'Loss of benefits indicator' field has been created for this new feature in the AFI, CFA and FRE files.

The updated files are attached with the changes highlighted on a grey background.

Law 44/2007 of 13 December, regulates the placement companies scheme, setting out a framework that promotes job placement for persons in a situation of social exclusion through this type of company.

The implementation of this regulation has led to the creation of two new contract codes, agreed with the Public State Employment Service.

The new contracts are:

452 – TEMPORARY. FULL-TIME. UNEMPLOYED WORKERS HIRED BY PLACEMENT COMPANIES.

552 – TEMPORARY. PART-TIME. UNEMPLOYED WORKERS HIRED BY PLACEMENT COMPANIES.

These new contracts must be linked to Contribution Account Codes identified as placement companies.

A new value for the 'Social exclusion/Domestic violence' field has also been created, which must accompany these two new contracts.

The new value is 4= Social exclusion – Placement programme.

These two new employment contract codes are still not operational in the area of contributions. An upcoming RED News Bulletin will announce the implementation date.