Real-time tax credit… For individual employers, this month of January 2022 is synonymous with change. The payment of the tax credit for the employment of an employee at home is modified: it becomes monthly. The year of delay between the payment of wages and contributions to the employee and the receipt of the tax benefit is eliminated. However, rather cumbersome to implement, the reform will be rolled out according to a very gradual schedule: in January for Cesu members, in April for services provided via service providers or agents … and 2024 only, for Pajemploi users ( childcare). To discuss this major reform, Capital spoke with Marie Béatrice Levaux, the president of the Federation of Individual Employers (Fepem). The president of the socio-professional organization, which represents 3.3 million individuals, defends this new mechanism which, according to her, will bring purchasing power to families. She also evokes the work carried out to revitalize a sector which will face, during the next decade, an enormous need for manpower. And do not hesitate to vituperate against policies that wish to reduce the tax advantage granted to individual employers.
Capital: Why did Fepem fight to obtain the payment in real time, namely each month, of the tax credit to individual employers?
Marie Béatrice Levaux: It is a subject that we have been carrying for a good fifteen years! During the presidential campaign in 2017, the main candidates, like Emmanuel Macron, were committed. Technically, it was the entry into force of the withholding tax that facilitated the implementation of the real-time payment of the tax credit to individual employers. This new device is a gain in purchasing power for individual employers. Concretely, if you pay your employee 10 euros per hour, the total cost of employment with charges is 16 euros. With the new payment, from January, private employers will only have to pay 8 euros of out-of-pocket expenses against 16 euros previously, for which they had to wait for a reimbursement months later.
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Capital: But, surprisingly, not all private employers will benefit from the reform at the same time …
Marie Béatrice Levaux: It’s true, we have a problem with Pajemploi. Individual employers who use the platform to look after their children will not enter the mechanism until 2024. There is a break in processing, even if these individual employers will keep the system of the deposit paid in January (60% of the amount of the tax credit calculated on the amount received the previous year, editor’s note). I would have preferred, of course, that this was not the case, but it is not bad will … The information system of Paje must be reworked to initiate the reform (in particular to integrate the complement of mode of keep, editor’s note).
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Capital: Do you think that the real-time payment will make it possible to fight against undeclared work?
Marie Béatrice Levaux: Yes, individual employers who still hesitate to declare their employee at home must understand that there is no longer any interest in not declaring their employee. Because undeclared work will now cost much more than legal work. For modest households who sometimes give up hiring, this reform is a very good thing because it removes the blocking element of the cash advance.
Capital: During the five-year term, parliamentarians, particularly on the left of the political spectrum, campaigned for the tax credit to be reviewed and concentrated on a smaller number of households, excluding the better-off. What do you think ?
Marie Béatrice Levaux: I do not agree with this idea. The tax credit for the employment of an employee at home is undoubtedly one of the most effective support models of public policy. I remind you that the individual employer benefits from a specific tax status because he cannot deduct the employment expense from his income. It is a non-professional, non-profit, non-profit employer. It is enshrined in the Labor Code. The mechanism has proven its usefulness in the daily life of the French. I do not understand why we constantly want to recreate concern about this.
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Capital: By 2030, your sector will need to recruit at least 800,000 people, in particular due to massive retirements, what are you doing to make it more attractive?
Marie Béatrice Levaux: Since January 1, 2022, a new collective agreement (merger between that of Cesu and childminders) applies to all employees in the home employment sector. It ratifies very important new social rights: access to health at work, access to social and cultural activities through a digital platform, the payment of a retirement bonus greater than the right common and the opening of apprenticeship contracts as in other sectors of the economy. I work to strengthen the cohesion of our business sector. We face a major challenge.
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