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Cheques emploi service- A simpleton's guide please


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I live in England and have a maison secondaire in France. I don't pay any French Taxes (apart from the usual foncière, d'habitation etc of course!)

I want to start employing someone on a casual basis for occasional lawn mowing. I understand that to stay legal, (which I want to do), I should use chèques emploi service. One of my French neighbours, who works for a bank in Paris, explained it to me and I think I got the general gist. As far as I can make out, it is a way of me paying employer's tax/insurance contributions on behalf of my employee without having to put him/her on a payroll and formalising with a contract etc. I understand from my neighbour that all I need to do is order a chèques emploi service cheque book from my bank and use this to pay a registered employee. I have been scouring the forums but cannot find any answers to 2 questions:

  • Do I have to register with anyone to use these cheques or is it the employee that does the registration?

  • If I pay a cheque of, say, 20€ can I expect further deductions from my bank account of another 10€ or thereabouts in payment for taxes etc? In other words, if my gardener charges me 20€/hour am I actually paying 30€/hour?

 

 

 

 

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Hi, my neighbours got a cleaning lady, so this is what she told me:

The first time you order a cheque book at your bank, you'll need to fill out a special form (at the bank) to declare you as an employer ,includes directdebit authorisation, so the employer and employee charges 'cotisations' can be debited from your account. So yes you're pretty much right, you'll have to count apprx an extra 50% for the charges

For french income tax payers, they can declare the pay + cotisations, to make a tax reduction; however in your case being non-resident I think it's tough luck!

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The cheque book has two pages to fill out each time.  One is a straightforward cheque which you make out to the employee at the agreed time (I do mine once a month in arrears, then we know how many hours need to be paid for).  The second page is an instruction to pay the appropriate amount in cotisations, which they work out from the info you fill in about hours worked and rate of pay.  I got my employee to help me fill it out the first time and then I just do the same thing each time.  There are envelopes to send this form off, pre-addressed but not pre-paid unfortunately.  You can also do it on line, but I haven't got round to figuring this out yet.

Hope this helps

Chrissie (81)

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  • 8 months later...

It is around 50% if you use "base forfaitaire" for the cotisations not sure if you use "salaire reel".  You will see if on the slip you send off there is a little box to tick - the  base forfaitaire gives the minimum cover - you are not allowed to pay less than the SMIC (which I think is 8.27 an hour at the moment) so on that basis you will be deducted about 12+ euros per hour and so forth.  Be warned it often seems to take about 6 weeks after sending off slip for them to deduct the money and it can come as a bit of a shock if you have forgotten about it, especially as it suddenly appears as cheque number different from your others and for an amount you have no recollection of writing.  If you employee comes in once every so often you can pay for several visits with one cheque if you like, you just put dates from and to on the counterfoil, it is easy to fill in but you must have the employees French social security number.

At the end of the year you get a summary which can be set against your tax return.

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I do "salaire réel" and the last few slips I have shows the cotisations at just over 54% of the salary paid.  You can now avoid filling out and posting the second slip in the cheque book and can do it on line (at least I can here, it may not be the same for all departments). 

Chrissie (81)

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