Wages and SMIC (minimum wage), Jean-Luc Mélenchon
Profit sharing (participation, intéressement): Capped dividends; profit-sharing schemes subject to contributions
Direction of change: change of another kind, or uncertain direction, compared with current law.
The lever. Share of profits paid back to employees: participation, intéressement, employee share ownership, value-sharing bonuses. Direction rule: ↑ sharing schemes extended or made more advantageous.
« Plafonner les versements de dividendes aux actionnaires en limitant la part des bénéfices qui leur est distribuée à la part versée aux employés […] soumettre à cotisation les dividendes, les revenus d’intéressement, de participation, d’épargne salariale, ainsi que les revenus financiers des entreprises »1Translation by the editorsCap dividend payments to shareholders by limiting the share of profits distributed to them to the share paid to employees […] make dividends, income from profit-sharing (intéressement, participation) and employee savings, as well as companies' financial income, subject to contributions
Encoding
Position linked to an option of the cost schedule, with no parameter to set: see the costing.
Costing
Announced by the candidate
not announced
The programme does not cost this measure.
Published costings
none
No external costing of this position recorded to date.
Our calculation
+€3.7bn
per year for the public accounts, new revenue, range +€3.7bn to +€4.9bn.
The calculation
- Make profit-sharing, incentive schemes, company savings plans and employee share ownership subject to standard contributions (base exemptions, 2026): Option costed by the source: a gain of €3.7bn (3.7 to 4.9) per year.
Partial costing. Quote in two passages: p. 35 (dividend cap) and p. 38 (contributions). Only the contributions on profit-sharing, employee profit participation and employee savings are costed (base exemptions, PLFSS 2026). Not costed: the dividend cap, a distribution rule with no static budgetary effect costed by any source; the contributions on dividends and on companies' financial income, provided for in the same sentence, with no base or rate; the PERCO and the collective company PER (€0.2bn net in 2026), which Annex 4 classifies with supplementary pensions. The option also includes employee share ownership (stock options, free shares), which the text does not cite but which weighs €0bn net.
Current law, sources and limits of the cost schedule
Current law. Sums paid under participation, intéressement, employer matching (abondement) and the value-sharing bonus are exempt from income tax (CGI (General Tax Code), Art. 81-18°, 163 bis AA, 163 bis B, etc.; tax expenditure 120108). PPV (value-sharing bonus) paid: €3.4bn in 2024, compared with €5.2bn in 2023.
Horizon. Full year, €bn per year, in 2025 euros
Limits. The tax cost is an « ordre de grandeur » [“order of magnitude”] (reliability indicated by the DGFiP), constant at €2.75bn from 2023 to 2025. Making profit-sharing (participation) compulsory in more companies has no direct static budgetary cost: effect on corporate income tax not costed. Social component (PLFSS 2026, annex 4, table 9): subjecting participation, intéressement, the PEE, stock options and free shares to ordinary social contributions would raise €3.7bn net in 2026 (central), after deducting the forfait social and specific contributions; €4.9bn gross, excluding general reductions (upper bound). 2026 forecast before the PLFSS 2026 measures. The PERCO and the collective company PER (€0.2bn net) are classified separately, with supplementary pensions. Known limitation: the PLFSS annex counts only social security contributions; supplementary pension and unemployment insurance contributions, which are also general government revenue, are missing, so the option underestimates the gain. The Institut Montaigne (2022) costs the same measure, including all ordinary contributions and after deducting the forfait social, at €9bn (base of €20.3bn in 2019, static); this costing, with a different scope and year, does not enter the range. No source read gives it for 2026. The income tax exemption is a tax expenditure: declared overlap with the across-the-board trimming of tax expenditures. The total yield of the forfait social and employer contributions on employee share ownership is not published by scheme; only the 2025 increase on free shares (from 20 to 30%) is costed, at €0.5bn. The PLF 2026 costs the income tax exemption (120108) at €2.89bn in 2024, 2025 and 2026, against €2.75bn in the PLF 2025: the « suppression-exoneration-ir » option uses €2.89bn. Rule on public bases (18 October 2026), editors' calculations: exempting participation from the forfait social costs at most 20% × €12.1bn of participation (exempted base forecast for 2026, PLFSS 2026, annex 4), i.e. €2.42bn; the figure overestimates the cost, as participation paid by companies with fewer than 50 employees, already exempt, is not isolated. Abolishing the employer contribution on free share awards and stock options (30% since 2025) costs about €1.5bn: the rate increase from 20 to 30% brings in €0.5bn, i.e. €0.05bn per point (lower bound and central value); 30% of the €5.2bn base for 2026 gives €1.56bn (upper bound). The forfait social on employer matching (abondement) in securities is not costed.
- PLF 2025, Évaluation des voies et moyens, tome II, 2024-10: « 120108 – Exonération des sommes versées au titre de la participation, de l'intéressement […] 2 750 / 2 750 / 2 750 ; Fiabilité du réalisé : Ordre de grandeur »
- Groupe d'experts SMIC, Rapport 2025, 2025-11-25: « le montant total versé est passé de 5,2 milliards d'euros à 3,4 milliards d'euros entre ces deux années »
- PLFSS 2026, annexe 4, tableau 9, Coût total des exemptions d'assiette, 2025-10: « I. Participation financière et actionnariat salarié : 2026 (p), assiette exemptée 32,3 ; cotisations équivalentes brutes 4,9 ; nettes 3,7 (en Md€). Dont participation aux résultats de l'entreprise 12,1 / 1,9 / 1,3 ; intéressement 12,4 / 2,4 / 1,8 ; plan d'épargne en entreprises (PEE) 2,5 / 0,6 / 0,6 ; stock options et attributions gratuites d'actions 5,2 / 0,0 / 0,0. ; Pour cette estimation de perte de cotisations et contributions sociales, il est également tenu compte des contributions spécifiques (tel que le forfait social) qui sont prélevées sur les sommes exclues de l'assiette des cotisations. La perte de cotisations nette correspond à l'effet des exemptions d'assiette sur les cotisations de droit commun. A titre d'information, la perte de cotisations brute, qui résulte des exemptions d'assiette hors dispositifs d'allégements généraux est aussi estimée. ; La mesure vise à relever la contribution patronale spécifique due sur les attributions gratuites d'actions pour un surcroit de recettes, de l'ordre de 0,5 Md€ (hors changement de comportement) […] par le relèvement du taux de la contribution patronale spécifique applicable sur les AGA à 30 % »
- PLF 2026, Évaluation des voies et moyens, tome II, Dépenses fiscales, 2025-10: « 120108 – Exonération des sommes versées au titre de la participation, de l'intéressement, de l'abondement, d'un partage de plus-value, des primes de partage de la valeur […] Réalisation 2024 : 2 890 ; Prévision 2025 : 2 890 ; Prévision 2026 : 2 890 ; Fiabilité du réalisé : Ordre de grandeur »
- Legifiscal, Forfait social et fiscalité de la participation (mis à jour le 9 février 2024), 2024-02-09: « La participation est soumise au forfait social au taux de 20%. […] Seules les entreprises de moins de 50 salariés sont exonérées de ce forfait. »
How to read these amounts. These are static costs and revenues, with no feedback effect, over a full year: nothing on growth, employment or the revenue that economic activity would gain or lose. A higher net cost does not on its own make a worse policy, nor net savings a better one: each programme rests on an economic model (demand-led stimulus, lower compulsory levies, consolidation of the public accounts…) that the cost schedule does not settle. GDP itself measures a volume of activity, not well-being or the usefulness of what is produced. Economic models and feedback effects.
- L’Avenir en commun (édition 2025), p. 35. Open the document at this page.
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