Anyone involved in human resources management still remembers with a cold sweat the maelstrom that followed the pandemic. Confinement, recoverable paid leave, laws published every quarter of an hour (which in many cases amended the rule that had not yet lost the heat of the printer), restrictions, extraordinary security measures, essential workers and activities and a long etcetera of things we had not seen to date.

In this maelstrom, the confusion generated by the requests for suspension of contracts due to force majeure stands out. Initially denied, most of them subsequently granted, in short, a legal chaos that led to blunders, which were certainly understandable.

One of the most common was applying for the rebate on Social Security contributions for the months of May 2020 onwards without presenting the responsible declaration of being in ERTE due to force majeure; a requirement that was not necessary at the beginning, but which was introduced in one of the countless modifications that this matter underwent.

The Social Security has systematically denied this rebate for the mere absence of this responsible declaration, which we consider to be nonsense, since the essential thing should be the nature of the ERTE, and not the presentation of a simple piece of paper.

Despite the fact that the vast majority of appeals to the Administration and subsequent judgments of the contentious administrative courts have been denying this rebate for this mere formal defect, in our firm we have been able to recover in court an important rebate that was denied for the simple fact of not having presented at the time (when submitting the contributions) the aforementioned responsible declaration. You are still in time.