Companies closing their accounts on December 31 have until May 31 to pay their employees profit-sharing and participation bonuses when they are due. They amounted on average to 2,457 euros per person for profit-sharing and 2,926 euros for participation in SBF 120 companies in 2022, according to the Profit Sharing Barometer developed by the Eres group. What to do with it? The employee can receive these bonuses to finance a major expense. But be careful, these will then be subject to income tax. “The mistake would be to collect these sums and then put them back into a savings product while having paid the tax in the process,” underlines François Dillemann, savings sales director at Malakoff Humanis.
If you do not need these sums immediately, it would be in your best interest to place them in an employee savings plan, that is to say in the company savings plan (PEE), blocked five years, or the collective retirement savings plan (PER), immobilized until retirement. In this case, the profit-sharing and participation are not taxable. In addition, this choice allows, in the many companies providing it, to receive a contribution from your employer. This is an additional sum paid by the company and rewards the employee’s savings effort.
The contribution varies from one company to another
Each employer sets its allocation rules, within the limit of 300% of profit-sharing and participation, with a ceiling of 3,709.44 euros this year on the PEE and 7,418.88 euros on the collective PER. “You must check your company agreement to optimize the payment of the contribution: some contribute more to the PEE, others to the PER, or apply different ceilings,” specifies Marie-Noëlle Auclair, expertise and solutions director at Eres. It then remains to choose the fund(s) in which to invest, depending on the choice offered but also on your risk tolerance and your investment horizon.
Good to know, the PEE provides for many cases of early release. “The employee can therefore place his profit-sharing and his participation in his PEE to avoid taxation and then recover the sums immediately afterwards, if he buys his main residence, gets married, etc.,” advises Marie-Noëlle Auclair.
In the absence of a response from the employee on the fate of their profit-sharing or participation, the amounts are automatically invested. “The profit-sharing is paid entirely into the PEE, the participation is allocated half to the PEE and half to the collective PER within the framework of managed management”, recalls François Dillemann. They are generally paid into a secure investment.