The current baseline: healthcare is already broadly universal, but not every risk is treated identically
That does not mean that every professional status enjoys identical protection against every risk. Self-employed workers currently pay several separate contributions for health and maternity, pensions, disability/death, family policy and CSG-CRDS. Occupational accident coverage is not automatically organised in the same way as for employees. Unemployment also follows a different route: the ATI benefit exists under conditions, but it is not a simple equivalent of employee unemployment insurance.
Core rule: no employer payroll contribution where there is no employee
The model therefore separates company profit, the director's personal professional income and salaries paid to employees. Normalised taxable profit is subject to corporate income tax. Personal professional income builds personal social rights. Employee wages trigger a simplified employer contribution.
If the business employs nobody and the active owner takes no professional remuneration, there is no payroll and therefore no employer payroll contribution. Universal healthcare remains available. Contributory pension and earnings-replacement rights, however, are built only when professional income is declared and contributed on.
For the owner: one personal contribution instead of a status maze
An active owner or self-employed worker who draws professional income should finance personal protection through a single readable contribution rather than a stack of status-specific levies. therefore proposes a single personal social contribution charged on professional income actually paid to the individual. Its final rate is deliberately not invented here: it must be set through actuarial microsimulation once the retained rights package is defined.
That contribution would map transparently to health-related income replacement, maternity/paternity, disability/death, contributory pension rights and protection against verified involuntary loss of activity. The principle is straightforward: where two people pay the same contribution for the same insured risk, professional status alone should not exclude one of them from the corresponding right.
A universal core plus contributory rights
Employees: readable payroll and only the contributions required to fund retained rights
Where employees exist, the employer naturally contributes to the rights created by those jobs. The objective is to replace overlapping rates, exemptions, rebates and compensating subsidies with a much clearer architecture: one main employer contribution on payroll and one clearly identified personal contribution.
The final rates must follow the removal of obsolete aid schemes and a full financing model. therefore avoids both false shortcuts: keeping high payroll charges to finance benefits that have been abolished, or announcing a tiny contribution rate without showing how healthcare, pensions and income replacement remain funded.
| Situation | Tax on company profit | Employer contribution | Personal contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| No employees, retained profit | Yes, under the corporate-tax schedule | 0 | 0 on zero personal income; universal healthcare remains |
| Active owner draws professional income | On normalised taxable profit | No fictional employer payroll charge if there is no employee | One personal contribution on professional income |
| Company employs staff | Yes | One simplified employer contribution on wages | Personal rights follow each worker |
Preventing a new loophole: zero salary, everything as dividends
Simplification must not create a new avoidance channel. Someone who actively works in their own company should not be able to report zero professional income indefinitely, withdraw all value under a different label and simultaneously claim full contributory rights.
The rule is deliberately narrow: company profit remains profit; capital distributions remain capital distributions; personal contributory rights follow professional income that actually bore the contribution. No extra contributory pension or income-replacement right is created by non-contributed dividends. Anti-abuse control focuses on artificial relabelling of remuneration rather than turning every small business into a permanent tax investigation.
Financing the universal core without loading everything onto labour
Universal healthcare is a collective service and should not depend only on how many employees a particular business has. The reform therefore opens a financing shift: a larger share of the healthcare core can come from broad general resources, while pension and earnings-replacement rights remain tied to visible personal contributions.
This makes it possible to pursue two objectives together: substantially reduce the marginal cost of hiring and never leave an entrepreneur without healthcare coverage. The financing mix must still pass through the multi-year budget model before any claim of fiscal neutrality is made.
Official sources — current French system
Editorial status: descriptions of current law are documentary; rules are policy proposals requiring actuarial modelling and legal review before legislation.