How a French payslip works
A French payslip starts from gross pay (salaire brut) and takes off two kinds of deduction. The first is social contributions (cotisations salariales): old-age insurance, the Agirc-Arrco supplementary pension, and the two earmarked taxes on pay, the CSG and the CRDS. What remains is net pay before tax (net à payer avant impôt), the figure most French job offers and payslips highlight. The second deduction is income tax, which since 2019 the employer withholds at source (prélèvement à la source, PAS) from that net figure. The amount that reaches your account is the net paid after tax (net payé). The employer pays its own, larger set of contributions on top of gross, and a general reduction lowers them on lower wages.
The calculator follows the official payslip logic for the year shown: the contribution rates and ceilings published by URSSAF and Agirc-Arrco, and the withholding rules published by the tax administration. Its figures were checked line by line against the URSSAF salary simulator.
Social contributions
Most contributions are a rate on a slice of pay measured against the annual social security ceiling (plafond de la sécurité sociale, PASS):
- Old-age insurance has a capped part, charged on pay up to one ceiling, and a much smaller uncapped part on all pay.
- Supplementary pension (Agirc-Arrco) is compulsory for every private-sector employee. It is charged in two tranches: up to one ceiling at a lower rate, and between one and eight ceilings at a higher one. The general balance contribution (CEG) follows the same two tranches, and the technical balance contribution (CET) applies only when pay exceeds the ceiling. Executives (cadres) also pay a small contribution to APEC, the executive employment body.
- Health costs the employee nothing in most of France. Employees covered by the local scheme of Alsace and Moselle pay a supplementary health contribution, which the calculator adds when you tick the box.
- Unemployment insurance no longer has an employee share; only the employer pays.
The CSG (contribution sociale généralisée) and the CRDS (contribution au remboursement de la dette sociale) are charged on almost all of your pay: a small allowance for professional expenses reduces the base, but only on pay up to four ceilings. Part of the CSG is deductible from taxable income. The rest of the CSG and all of the CRDS are not, which is why the payslip shows them on separate lines.
Income tax withheld at source
The withholding is a rate applied to your net taxable pay (net imposable): gross pay minus the deductible contributions. The non-deductible CSG and CRDS are not taken off, and neither is any allowance for work expenses, so net taxable pay is slightly higher than net pay before tax.
Which rate applies depends on what the tax office has sent your employer:
- A personal rate (taux personnalisé) is worked out from your household's last tax return. Most employees have one. It already reflects your family situation, your other income and the progressive tax scale, and couples can ask for it to be split between the two partners. You find it on your payslip and in your online account on the tax administration's website. Choose the personal rate above and enter it to reproduce your payslip.
- The default rate (taux neutre, or taux non personnalisé) applies when the employer has no personal rate: on a first job, after certain changes, or when you have asked for your rate not to be passed on. It comes from a published grid of pay bands and treats you as a single person with no other income and no children.
The default grid is not a progressive scale. It picks one rate from your monthly taxable pay and applies it to the whole amount, so the step from one band to the next raises the withholding on everything below it too. Just above a band boundary, a raise can therefore reduce take-home pay; the calculator warns you when you are that close. The annual tax return corrects the difference either way, because the withholding is only an advance on the tax the return settles.
The default grid is revised with the finance law each year. For this year the new grid took effect part-way through the year, and the calculator uses the grid in force now; pay from the start of the year was withheld on the previous grid.
What the employer pays on top
The employer section lists the contributions every private employer pays at national rates: health, old-age, family allowances, the solidarity contribution for autonomy (CSA), the housing fund (FNAL), unemployment insurance and the wage guarantee fund (AGS), the employer share of Agirc-Arrco, CEG, CET and APEC, and the social dialogue contribution. The housing fund depends on whether the employer has fewer than fifty employees, which is why the size is one of the options.
Against these the employer deducts the general reduction of employer contributions (réduction générale dégressive unique, RGDU), which replaced the earlier reductions this year. It is a coefficient of gross pay, largest at the minimum wage and falling as pay rises, and it stops entirely at three times the minimum wage. Because it stops rather than tapering to nothing, employer cost jumps at that point even though the employee's payslip does not change. The payslip shows it as a negative line, and so does the calculator.
Several employer charges depend on the particular employer and are not included: the work-accident rate (AT/MP), which is set for each establishment; the transport levy (versement mobilité), which depends on the town; training and apprenticeship taxes and the construction effort contribution, which depend on size; and the employer's share of complementary health and provident schemes, with the social levy that goes with it. Together they typically add a few per cent of gross to the real cost of the job.
What this calculator assumes
The result models a private-sector employee in metropolitan France on a permanent contract, paid the same every month. It does not cover:
- The overseas departments, which have their own default grids and, for Mayotte, their own contribution rates.
- Complementary health insurance and provident schemes. Your employer must offer a health plan and pays at least half of it; your share is deducted from net pay and the employer's share is added to the CSG base and to taxable pay.
- Overtime, which carries its own contribution relief and tax exemption, bonuses paid in a single month, benefits in kind and meal vouchers.
- Short fixed-term contracts, apprentices, directors and other special statuses, and part-time work below the minimum wage.
- The special abatement on the default rate for contracts of two months or less.
Withholding versus your final tax
The French income tax is assessed on the household, with a system of shares (quotient familial) for a spouse and children, and it has credits and reductions for childcare, home help and donations that payroll never sees. The withholding is an advance on that tax. The spring return settles the difference: a refund in the summer if too much was withheld, extra payments from September if too little. Use this page to understand a payslip or compare an offer, and your online tax account for what you will finally owe.