I set up a microentreprise in 2008, an accountant did it for me and told me what to pay and I thought I was paying everything I should be but now I am confused.
I pay the CFE monthly that is fine. I pay URSSAF and also RSI/RAM every quarter. I have had someone tell me that I should only have been paying URSSAF and that they then pay RSI/RAM is that true? Then they told me I should have been paying CIPAV which I had never been contacted until just now by them saying I owe just over 10k, which I can see is a mistake in amount as it says I declared 196k this year when I only declared 20k!
So do I have to pay this CIPAV or is it optional? Should I be paying both URSSAF and RSI/RAM or only one?
You do mean CFE donât you? Iâm sure you can pay it monthly, but this is billed annually and is usually only a few hundred euros, most people pay it as a one off payment in December.
How do you pay? If you declare and pay online, you pay all your dues in one payment and your bank statement will show that URSSAF has debited the amount. This payment includes health cotisations, pension contributions dependent on earnings, training contribution, and income tax PAYG if you opted to pay that. Presumably URSSAF distribute all the different elements that go to make up your âcotisationsâ to the appropriate organisations each month, but you donât need to worry about that, all you need to do is declare your turnover and pay URSSAF the full amount (ie if youâre prof lib, around 24 / 25% of turnover).
Do you declare online, via the netentreprises portal? If so, you can look back at the records of all the payments you have made, startubg from when you first set up the business right up to the present. That might clarify things a bit.
Courage ! But do go and see them/phone and get them to sort it before you get letters from the hussier (trust me it happens even when itâs 100% their mistake)
Thank you both. So to clarify. I set it up in 2008 as a microentreprise, before the autoentrepreneur existed, so it is a bit different I think. I think with the AE you pay around 25% of your income each month and it is all then distrubuted to the other bodies. Mine is ME and the CFE is monthly, this is all fine I have no problems with this and know I must pay it, no problem there. Then I pay URSSAF every quarter about 2-300 Euros (when only declared around 12k) and I also pay RSI/RAM every quarter about 3-400 Euros.
When I said âtheyâ it was a person I know with an AE they said I should only be paying URSSAF and not URSSAF AND RSI/RAM, that I should not have been paying the RSI/RAM as it comes out of what I pay URSSAF. So my concern is have I been paying twice for the health part? Or is it simply that with the ME you pay them separately and with AE you pay one who then pays the others?
This same person then told me that I should have been paying CPAV and that they would catch up with me and give me a big bill. I have now had a bill for 10k, saying 1k was for 2016 and 9k for 2017 and nothing showing for previous years, but as I said the amount is a mistake as it says I declared 196k (I wish!) and I have no idea if I am supposed to pay CIPAV if I pay the other things.
It would be nice if I had been paying too much and get it back hahaha but I know how some things are here and have had dealings with the dreaded huissier before!
Sorry, ignore my first post - normally when people say âmicroentrepriseâ they mean the business structure called micro entreprise (ie the business structure that was introduced in 2009 as auto entrepreneur and was subsequently revised slightly and renamed to micro entrepreneur in 2016) and thatâs what I and I think Andrew were talking about, and very possibly the AE/ME person that you were talking to. However, it seems that you have a different business structure, and from what you say it sounds complicated - how do you know how much to pay, do you have to work it out yourself?. Canât help with that Iâm afraid, I only know about âmicro entrepriseâ.
But normally, broadly speaking, assuming you are prof lib (are you?), you would expect to pay total cotisations amounting to roughly 25% of turnover or 45% of profit. Itâs not clear to me whether the figure you declare for your income is turnover or profit. If profit then 5k cotis on 12k profit sounds about right, if turnover then it sounds too much.
As said, your best bet is to go and talk to URSSAF and ask them to explain it to you.
As far as CIPAV goes, are you sure it is an actual bill or could it be that they are simply offering you the option of paying extra in order to boost your pension?
The 12k was turnover not profit and the URSSAF plus RSI/RAM comes to around 3k Euros per years give or take. They have always just sent me a demande des cotisations from URSSAF and also one from RSI/RAM and I have sent cheques off to both. The CIPAV thing I just received is titled Appel des cotisations annee 2017 with the bit at the bottom that you cut off to send with a cheque.
My URSSAF is now appointment only and has only had slots when I canât go, they have also not been very friendly or helpful with previous issues so I wanted to be armed with the facts before going in. I will try to make an appointment now work is quieter but the deadline for this CIPAV is the 15th October so I am a bit concerned if I get a majoration.
I also had a micro enterprise set up in 2008 and changed it when AE was introduced. But I do recall getting random large bills from CIPAV as well as RSI. I did get most of it refunded as they had miscalculated, but had to pay it in the meantime.
oups! Anna,I always believed they dealt with the health bit too, palming it off to another organisation as the rsi do,thatâs what the urssaf told me back in 2009 when setting up as an AE but we didnât take it any further with the cipav as they wouldnât take (but do now) AE and so the rsi stepped in taking the prof. libs that would normally have been with cipav.
As I recall itâs quite easy to set up an online account with CIPAV, hopefully the letter you received will give you all the reference numbers you need. Then once you access your espace client you should be able to see records of what youâve paid in over the years and what rights you have accumulated etc. (Note the âshouldâ - my account shows nothing since 2015, and even documents I was able to generate a few years ago have vanished and I donât seem to be able to generate them again - lucky that I kept copies on file. CIPAV arenât really fit for purpose.) There is also a tab called Mes Cotisations which is not available to micro entrepreneurs but it may tell you what you need to know. If you sign up and dig around, it may shed some light or it may not - worth a try? https://espace-personnel.lacipav.fr/#!/connexion/
Thank you I did that and it told me the same as the bill so I unregistered in case I was subscribing to something I did not need. What I still do not know is is the CIPAV optional, ie if they worked out the correct amount based on what I earned, to pay do I have to pay them. I ask because I do not need a pension at all so is it something you can just opt out of or if I never pay it do I get fined or simply never receive a pension?
AFAIK you canât opt out of pension contributions completely. Itâs part of social security, everyone who is working contributes to a pension fund, and yours - if you are a prof lib - is CIPAV.
You need to ask CIPAV what is the minimum contribution you are obliged to pay and make sure youâre not paying for bells and whistles you donât need, I seem to recall that you can also request to pay reduced contributions in return for reduced benefits, there is a degree of flexibility (although I donât think you can request to change the level of contributions you pay retrospectively). But, if they have you down as earning more than you did, surely that is the first thing to rectify with them, since cotisations are relative to income?
Once I phoned CIPAV with a query and spoke to a very sullen and not very sympathetic chap but he did give me the answer to my question. I donât know if that is typical.
Thank you for all of your help. I have had so many problems with people who are supposed to know what they are doing and then you find out they are just trying to get money out of you so I was reluctant to call them as I thought it unlikely they would say oh yes you do not have to pay if they thought they could make money from me by being vague and unhelpful. That should probably be the collective name of the bodies you have to deal with working for yourself VAU!
In my 2nd year of activity, despite only having declared a turnover of 32K, I got a bill from them for 11K! Note that CIPAV base their demand on some initial basic minimum which they then âcorrectâ based on your turnover from the year N-2 to calculate next yearâs contributions. If your turnover varies significantly (up/down) from year to year, then you get regularly hammered. To be fair, CIPAV has got better at calculating my contributions and can now correct them within the year, but it still means having a large sum to pay in November of each year. It has taken me 9 years to just about even things out, but if my turnover spikes again before the yearâs end I will have to find something expensive to buy (trip, training course, equipment) to lower my overall turnover in an attempt to mitigate the inevitable hike in my cotisations. With the changeover to the new regime, who knows what will happen.
Iâve always been AE/ME so never had any of these problems but have lots of sympathy for those that have.
A couple of years ago after CIPAV had been smacked hard by the courts they made an effort, got in touch with everyone, set up a new website that worked well, set up a telephone helpline and ran a series of roadshows around France to explain what CIPAV does and help people with queries. I went to one, it was well presented and afterwards they followed up with a lot of useful info. Since then theyâve lapsed back; the records on my espace client havenât been updated for 2 years, the documents that used to be there have vanished, and when you contact them you get no response. A real shame, because after the roadshow I actually felt that they were going to be a good organisation.
presumably you mean, reduce your profit? I donât see how you can lower your turnover except by lowering your turnover, if you see what I mean.
