On this International Women’s Rights Day, Renaissance MP Marie-Pierre Rixain tabled a bill aimed at strengthening tax equality between men and women. How? By individualising, by default, the rates of deduction at source within couples. The Prime Minister validates and promises an application in 2025. Without waiting, you can individualize your rate in three clicks!
Household rate or individualized rate, what’s the difference?
Delphine earns 2000euros net per month, and Arnaud 3000euros. Childless, this married couple pays 3,569 euros in income tax per year, most of this tax being deducted at source, from their salaries, at the rate of 5.9%. That is 118 euros deducted each month from Delphine’s salary (therefore 1882 euros of net salary after tax at source). And 178 euros on Arnaud’s pay slip (2822 euros net after tax). This 5.9% withholding tax is their household rate, the personalized rate applied by default.
What if their tax rates adapted to their respective incomes? The official DGFiP simulator announces an individualized rate of 7.4% for Arnaud, which would bring the monthly puncture to 222 euros (therefore 2,778 euros of net salary after tax at source), and an individualized rate of 3.7% for Delphine, i.e. 74 euros deducted at source from his payslip (therefore 1926 euros of net salary after tax).
Result: whether you choose the household rate or the individualized rate, the tax authorities levy the same amount every month. But this amount is distributed more proportionally with the individualized rate, at least in the event of a pronounced difference in income between the two members of the couple.
What will change in 2025
In 78% of cases, it is the woman who has the lowest income within the couple, underlines the deputy Marie-Pierre Rixain in commentary on the bill tabled in the National Assembly on Wednesday March 8. However, the household rate applied by default penalizes the spouse with the lowest income through a disproportionate tax rate, supports the MP, who wants apply the individualized rate by default for all couples subject to joint taxation.
This bill finds a favorable response to the government. Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne validates this measure but commits more medium term: The individual withholding tax rate will become the default rate from 2025.
How to change your withholding tax rate now
However, you don’t need to wait for this law to individualize your couple’s source rates! Each year, more than half a million households individualize their rate on their own, while just over 280,000 households backtrack after having used a different rate for each member of the couple, according to public statistics from the DGFiP. A few months after the start of the reform of the withholding tax, 5.8% of tax households had deliberately chosen the individualized rate.
How can you manage the withholding tax for your couple in this way? Three clicks are enough! First click: connect to your private space on impots.gouv.fr. Second click: open space manage my source deduction. Third click: check the button (circled in red, below) in the framework of individualize your withholding tax rate, the Public Treasury will tell you, in the same context, what are the individualized rates for the two members of the couple. Then confirm.
No impact on the annual tax of the tax household
Reminder: this individualized rate only affects the distribution of the monthly drain on your tax at source, over the year. It has no impact on the amount of your income tax. While the fact of opting or not for a joint taxation (with a separate declaration, for unmarried couples, for example) will modify the amount of the annual tax, by the game of the family quotient.