Among the hundred amendments of deputies retained by the executive for the 2023 state budget, there is an amendment presented by LR that refers to restaurant tickets (Edenred), lunch vouchers, Apetiz cards (Natixis) and other vouchers. restaurant available to employers to financially compensate for the fact that their employees cannot go home for lunch.
This modification refers specifically to the maximum amount that a company could be obliged to pay in tickets, checks or in the card of its employees, for each day of work. Today this daily ceiling is 11.84 euros. The Government has agreed to raise it to 13 euros. An increase whose cost to the State has been estimated by Bercy at 140 million euros, knowing that it is not an expense for the State but a loss of profits at the fiscal level.
The employer who pays food vouchers does not in fact pay social security contributions on what he pays to the workers, as long as the amount of the voucher does not exceed the ceiling provided. As for the employees, they will not have to pay personal income tax for the sums they receive in restaurant vouchers.
Up to 2,900 euros of non-taxable “income” for employees
Concretely, this means that an employer can now pay their employees up to €2,900 a year in meal vouchers without having to pay any social security contributions. Without going into too much detail, you will have to pay around half the value of the tickets paid to your employees (1,450 euros maximum) to the company that provides you with the cards or notebooks, discounting the rest of the salaries paid.
But even if their payroll is amputated, the employees also find their account there, since if they had received that money in payroll and not in restaurant vouchers, the treasury would have taken these payments into account in its tax base.
Money you can use to do all your grocery shopping
In addition to this tax advantage, there are new rules governing the use of restaurant vouchers. At least through the end of next year, these cards and tickets can be used to pay for all your grocery purchases. This freedom given to employees to spend this additional income without restriction has eliminated what was sometimes perceived as a disadvantage.
In fact, some employees were disadvantaged by having their payroll deducted from an amount that they had to use only to pay a bill in the restaurant, a quiche or a sandwich in the bakery or the purchase, in the supermarket, of immediately edible food products. .
A restaurant voucher that looks more and more like a meal check
It is this novelty that greatly annoys restorers. Their unions have already warned that they will fight to reverse this extension of the use of restaurant titles that have become food vouchers that do not say their name.
Critical voices are even raised among the issuers of this means of payment. In a column published on October 12 by La Croix, Youssef Achour, President of the cooperative group that offers its UpDejeuner, protests against this development.
The fact is that these developments should prompt more business leaders to increase their employees’ income by taking advantage of the tax advantages on offer. Therefore, the number of beneficiaries should increase. No precise figures are available in this regard. The boss of Up mentions the figure of 5 million beneficiaries. Other sources estimate it at 4.5 million.
In any case, it is still little compared to some 25 million employees identified in France. Therefore, if the number of beneficiaries increases as well as the amounts they receive, this means that the 7,500 million euros in restaurant vouchers distributed per year could increase significantly. And therefore the part of the cake that the companies share where they can spend.
Source: BFM TV
