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Minimum incomes and benefits, Bruno Retailleau

Automatic payment, single social allowance: Single social account, total benefits capped at 70% of net SMIC per adult

Direction of change: creation of a scheme, compared with current law.

The lever. Payment of benefits without any application, based on declared income, and possible merger of several benefits into a single one. Direction rule: ↑ more automatic payment, more consolidated benefits.

« Créer un Compte social unique, sur le modèle du compte fiscal : chaque adulte disposera d'un compte retraçant toutes les aides non contributives qu'il perçoit, quelle qu'en soit l'origine. Un plafond national s'appliquera ensuite : le total ne pourra pas dépasser 70 % du SMIC net par adulte, hors handicap, dépendance et vieillesse. »1

Translation by the editorsCreate a Compte social unique (single social account), modelled on the tax account: each adult will have an account recording all the non-contributory benefits they receive, whatever their origin. A national ceiling will then apply: the total may not exceed 70% of the net SMIC per adult, excluding disability, dependency and old age.

Encoding

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

Costing

Announced by the candidate

+€10bn

per year, gain for the public accounts. « Un gain annuel estimé à 10 milliards d'euros » [“An annual gain estimated at 10 billion euros”], drawn from the census of aid followed by the cap (measure no. 28); the candidate counts this gain, together with the fight against fraud, in the funding of his €30bn cut in contributions (measure no. 24).

Published costings

none

No external costing of this position recorded to date.

Our calculation

not costed

Cap on total non-contributory benefits at 70% of the net SMIC per adult (excluding disability, dependency and old age; pensions and unemployment benefits excluded from the calculation), counting discretionary aid, free services and social tariffs: the cost schedule does not have the distribution of combined benefits per household, and its options (take-up by all those entitled, merger of the RSA and the in-work benefit) do not represent a cap. The candidate announces a gain of €10bn.

Current law, sources and limits of the cost schedule

Current law. « solidarité à la source » (solidarity at source) reform: pre-filling of RSA (minimum income) income declarations, piloted in autumn 2024, with nationwide roll-out planned for the first quarter of 2025. The « allocation sociale unique » (single social allowance) project is not in force.

Horizon. Full year, €bn per year, in 2018 euros

Limits. The IPP considers the €2.9bn figure uncertain (« approximation » [“approximation”]); the DREES measures 34% quarterly non-take-up of the RSA and 20% persistent non-take-up. Gap between sources: the IPP costs €2.9bn for the RSA and in-work benefit together, the DREES about €3bn for the RSA alone, on different fields and vintages. For the single social allowance, the cost depends entirely on its parameters: 0 if it is done at constant cost, with losers. The lower bound (2) is an assumption by the editors: partial elimination of non-take-up. A position that promises automatic payment of social benefits in general is linked to the option of 100% take-up of the RSA and in-work benefit, as a partial costing: other benefits are not costed. Benchmark not counted: the Institut Montaigne (2022) costs automatic payment of all benefits at €4.3bn to €7.9bn (6.1 as central value), but its range rests on an assumed non-take-up of 0 to 10% for housing benefits and family allowances, without source, it deducts €1.7bn of supposed fraud assumed to be entirely avoided, and it counts €6bn for the RSA and in-work benefit, double the IPP costing used here.

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. avecretailleau.fr, mesure n° 28 « Plafonner les aides sociales à 70 % du SMIC ». Read the programme page.

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