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Wages and SMIC (minimum wage), Bruno Retailleau

Profit sharing (participation, intéressement): Abolishes the employer contribution on employee share ownership

Direction of change: increase, 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.

« Supprimer totalement la contribution patronale sur tous les dispositifs d'actionnariat salarié. »1

Translation by the editorsCompletely abolish the employer contribution on all employee share ownership schemes.

Encoding

Position linked to an option of the cost schedule, with no parameter to set: see the costing.

Costing

Announced by the candidate

amount not broken down

Amount announced with no readable annual amount for this position alone: « un coût budgétaire immédiat limité » [“a limited immediate budgetary cost”] (not costed). Added to this is the overhaul of the forfait social (employer levy on employee savings schemes) in measure no. 34 (20% levy kept on statutory profit-sharing, with incentive schemes (intéressement), the above-statutory share and individual retirement savings exempted), costed by the candidate at €2.8bn and counted in his « près de 15 milliards » [“nearly 15 billion”] on production taxes.

Published costings

none

No external costing of this position recorded to date.

Our calculation

−€1.5bn

per year for the public accounts, revenue cut, range −€1.6bn to −€1.5bn.

The calculation

  • Abolish the employer contribution on free share awards and stock options (30%): Option costed by the source: a cost of €1.5bn (1.5 to 1.56) per year.

Assumption by the editors. Partial costing. Costed: the 30% employer contribution on free share awards and stock options, about €1.5bn (editors' calculation: the increase in the rate from 20 to 30% in 2025 brings in €0.5bn; 30% of the €5.2bn base forecast for 2026 gives €1.56bn). Not costed: the forfait social on employer matching in securities and the other employee share ownership schemes, whose yield is not published. The overhaul of the forfait social in measure no. 34 (€2.8bn according to the candidate) is a separate measure, not costed.

Coefficient calculated by the editors from PLFSS 2026, annexe 4, tableau 9, Coût total des exemptions d'assiette: the position is marked as an assumption by the editors.

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.

This lever in the method · Costing for Bruno Retailleau

  1. Projet Retailleau, mesure n°96 « Supprimer la taxe qui pénalise l'actionnariat salarié ». Read the programme page.

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