Getting a bonus is just a bonus. So, obviously, this is good news… except that this bonus will sometimes prevent your employer from activating a lasting increase in your fixed salary.
Is your employer offering you or about a Macron bonus at the end of 2023? Or value sharing bonus? Obviously, you have no interest in refusing it! It’s always up for grabs. But this one-off bonus, for the employee, it is only advantageous in the short term, judge Nicolas Aubert, professor of finance at IAE Aix-Marseille. Because nothing in the characteristics of this bonus guarantees you that you will see it again the following year or during a very successful year for your business.
Macron bonus at the end of 2023, the opportunity to seize
806 euros, on average, for nearly 5 million employees. At the end of 2022, the value sharing bonus (PPV), or Macron revisited bonus, was a hit. Not necessarily on the number of beneficiaries, up slightly but without explosion compared to the previous version of the Macron bonus, called exceptional purchasing power bonus when it was created in the face of the Yellow Vest crisis, then when it was maintained in full force. health crisis. But the average amount was very much higher than the 401 euros of 2019, the 590 euros of 2020 and the 506 euros of 2021. In 2022, this hit was explained in particular by the explosion of inflation and by the vote of the power of attorney law. purchase
Rebelote at the end of 2023? In mid-December, INSEE was already anticipating massive payments of value sharing bonus (PPV) at the end of the year, like last year. Especially since the 2023 PPV is more interesting, fiscally speaking, than the 2024 PPV, both for employees and for businesses. It was completely tax-exempt (neither CSG, nor CRDS, nor income tax, etc.) in 2023. From January 2024, any Macron bonus paid to an employee is subject to income tax, CSG and CRDS, but it remains exempt from employee contributions under conditions.
A windfall effect, no I can’t confirm
Hence a potential windfall effect in 2023. A windfall effect, no I cannot confirm, says Lodie Chailloux, legal monitoring and social law consultant at ADP, a company seeing 3 million pay slips each month. In the DSN [dclaration mensuelle permettant de transmettre les informations France Travail, la CPAM, l’Urssaf, etc., NDLR]we have less PPV volume in December 2023 than in December 2022. And this does not seem to be the majority of companies paying PPV.
The 2023 vintage of Macron bonuses should therefore be in line with the 2022 vintage: not necessarily an explosion in the number of PPVs, but substantial amounts.
Macron bonus version 2024: a bonus or an easy alternative to salary and employee savings?
From 2024, even if taxed, the Macron bonus will not be buried. Far from it. On the one hand, the value sharing premium will remain completely tax-free until 2026 for employees of small businesses (less than 50 employees) if their remuneration is less than 3 SMIC.
Above all, it will always be possible to be exempt from income tax if you choose to place it in an employee savings plan. Exactly the same arbitration that already exists for an incentive or participation bonus.
Taxes. You are going to receive your employee savings bonus… should you take the cash or invest?
You have on one side an easy and inexpensive system and on the other a complex and expensive system… Which one will the SME boss choose?
In short: the PPV is now set in stone with taxation similar to profit-sharing and participation… but with much lower constraints. Why would an SME manager bother with employee savings schemes when there is PPV?, reacts academic Nicolas Aubert, specialist in employee savings and employee shareholding. You have on one side an easy and inexpensive system and on the other a complex and expensive system… Which one will the SME boss choose? I am caricature but the risk is obvious.
A sustainable Macron bonus, a new bonus… New features of the value sharing law
From the employer’s point of view, this PPV is an easy tool which, beyond the tax advantage, requires very little work to set up, recalls Nicolas Aubert. Participation is compulsory, but in companies with more than 50 employees.
Below 50 employees, nothing obligatoryapart from the entry into force of the law on sharing of value, on December 1, 2023, the establishment of a system if your business is a beneficiary for 5 years in a row. What device? Either participation, interest or… the Macron bonus. However, the Macron bonus offers total freedom of amount to the boss, while the incentive responds to a grid of previously determined objectives. The incentive agreement is what makes the most sense for management, judges Nicolas Aubert. We can use extra-financial criteria to motivate teams.
What you don’t give in salary increase goes through the Macron bonus…
The Macron bonus, a vacuum cleaner of incentive bonuses? Potentially… Worse: a potential vacuum cleaner of salary increases. When a one-off and fiscally attractive bonus for the employer takes the place of a more diffuse but more lasting increase on your pay slip. We are for salary increases, supported CFDT general secretary Marylise Lon last October at the RMC microphone: The Macron bonus is a little boost, it does not replace salary.
Fear justified? There is a huge problem: the substitution effect, confirms Nicolas Aubert. It’s forbidden but it still exists. An INSEE study has perfectly illustrated this. What you don’t give in salary increase goes through the Macron bonus…
Here is what INSEE writes in the study in question, published in March 2023: The bonus cannot, in theory, replace increases in remuneration or bonuses provided for by a salary agreement or by the employment contract. However, analysis of past devices of the same type shows thatin the absence of this measure, employers would undoubtedly have paid, in a different form, at least part of the amount of the bonus to their employees. Translation: bosses have indeed chosen the Macron bonus option, one-off, free amount, without constraint, a salary increase. An observation you repeat every year?