Déchiffrer 2027

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Working time and labour law, Bruno Retailleau

Overtime: Overtime free of contributions beyond 1,623 h/year, tax exemption kept

Direction of change: increase, compared with current law.

The lever. Rules on hours worked beyond the statutory working time: pay premium, exemptions from tax and social contributions, annual quota. Direction rule: ↑ overtime more advantageous or easier (ceiling, exemptions, pay premium).

« Exonérer totalement les heures supplémentaires de cotisations sociales. […] Instaurer un seuil « zéro cotisation » à partir de 1 623 heures par an, au lieu de 1 607. Au-delà, plus aucune cotisation sociale, ni salariale ni patronale : le salarié garde plus de 90 % du brut, seules la CSG et la CRDS restent dues, et l'exonération d'impôt sur les heures supplémentaires est maintenue. »1

Translation by the editorsFully exempt overtime from social contributions. […] Introduce a “zero contribution” threshold from 1,623 hours a year, instead of 1,607. Beyond that, no more social contributions, neither employee nor employer: the employee keeps more than 90% of gross pay, only the CSG and the CRDS remain due, and the income tax exemption on overtime is maintained.

Encoding

No cost-schedule parameter for this position: see the costing for the reason.

Costing

Announced by the candidate

€0bn

per year, direction to be read in the quote. « Neutre pour les finances publiques » [“Neutral for the public finances”] according to the candidate (the sixteen additional hours of work would fund the exemption); « Pour les entreprises, le gain atteint près de 11 milliards d'euros, dont 4,3 milliards rendus immédiatement sur les heures supplémentaires déjà réalisées » [“For businesses, the gain reaches nearly 11 billion euros, of which 4.3 billion returned immediately on overtime already worked”]

Published costings

none

No external costing of this position recorded to date.

Our calculation

not costed

New exemption (employer and employee contributions beyond 1,623 hours): no source read costs this scope.

Current law, sources and limits of the cost schedule

Current law. Statutory pay premium of 25% then 50% (Labour Code, Art. L3121-36, unless otherwise agreed). Income tax exemption up to €7,500 per year (CGI (General Tax Code), Art. 81 quater) and an 11.31% reduction in employee old-age contributions. An amendment abolishing the ceiling was adopted at first reading in the National Assembly on 25 October 2025: according to concurring sources, the ceiling remains in the final act (Journal officiel text not cited).

Horizon. Full year, €bn per year, in 2025-2026 euros

Limits. The tax cost has « ordre de grandeur » [“order of magnitude”] reliability. Annex 2 of the PLFSS 2025, cited elsewhere, gives €2.485bn. Static: the likely fall in declared hours is not counted. Abolition of the €7,500 ceiling: the only costing found comes from an accounting firm (€1bn) and is not used. The €2.31bn cost of the reduction in employee contributions comes from annex 4 of the PLFSS 2026 (€2,306m forecast for 2026, not compensated). The flat-rate deduction of employer contributions for companies with fewer than 250 employees also costs €872m in 2026 (compensated). The PLF 2026 raises the cost of the income tax exemption (120146): €2,144m actual in 2024, €2,250m forecast for 2026, against €1,787m forecast for 2025 in the PLF 2025, after a change of method (+€0.3bn): the « fin-exoneration-ir » and « fin-deux-exonerations » options use €2.25bn and €4.56bn. Abolishing the annual overtime quota has no static cost: with unchanged hours, nothing changes for public finances; the effect works through additional hours, which the cost schedule does not count.

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.

This lever in the method · Costing for Bruno Retailleau

  1. Projet Retailleau, mesure n°25 « Exonérer totalement les heures supplémentaires de cotisations sociales ». Read the programme page.

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