The sums placed in a retirement savings plan (PER) are blocked until the cessation of activity. You should therefore only put money there that you are certain you will not need. However, the regulations authorize the exceptional release of the plan in the event of a life accident or purchase of the main residence.
But be careful: this option only concerns voluntary payments and amounts from employee savings. “The purchase of the main residence does not constitute an authorized reason for unblocking payments made to the mandatory PER compartment,” specifies Maxime Chipoy, president of MoneyVox. And in any case, “it’s a flexibility that it is better to avoid having recourse to”, decides Gilles Belloir, the general director of Placement-direct.fr.
The tax consequences of the transaction are indeed clearly unfavorable. If the saver benefited from the tax advantage upon entering the PER on his voluntary payments, the sums released to purchase his home are subject to the income tax scale for the part corresponding to the payments, and the single flat-rate levy of 30% for the portion corresponding to capital gains.
The PER is a long-term envelope
The initial tax advantage is therefore reduced to zero. A taxpayer in the 30% marginal bracket having invested 10,000 euros in his PER benefited from an income tax saving of 3,000 euros (30% of 10,000 euros)? If he liquidates his contract to acquire a house or apartment, these 10,000 euros will be taxed at his marginal tax rate, which results in an additional income tax of 3,000 euros, not counting the taxation of the added value! And it could be worse. “A large withdrawal, for example of 50,000 euros, can push the taxpayer into the upper marginal bracket, at 41% in our example, which then generates a tax much higher than the tax savings made at the time of the payments “, explains Gilles Belloir.
There is another phenomenon to take into account. The PER being a long-term envelope, it is partly invested in shares, for a significant portion if the saver is young since their investment horizon is linked to their retirement date. “However, the release date will perhaps coincide with a low point in the stock markets, which could prove detrimental,” adds Alexandre Boutin, director of asset engineering at Primonial.
The situation is a little different for PERs opened by parents in the name of their minor child (these subscriptions are no longer authorized since January 1, 2024). Once they become adults, the child will be able to unlock their plan to buy their main residence. It will probably be taxed in a marginally lower bracket than that of its parents, for example at 11%, which this time allows the operation to remain profitable from a tax point of view.
Individuals seeking to finance their main residence therefore have an interest in drawing on other funds to build up a contribution, such as short-term investments (regulated savings accounts), the company savings plan (PEE) or insurance. life, particularly if she is over eight years old. “In this case, it is better to make a partial withdrawal to preserve the tax precedence of the contract, on which the saver will be able to make new payments when his savings capacity allows him to do so again,” advises Louis de Varax, director of the development of the UFF. The sums placed on the PER will be carefully preserved.