Whether your state of health no longer allows you to carry out your household chores or whether you simply want help and assistance at home for this work, you can call on a housekeeper .
Several solutions are available to you:you directly hire a person to help you or you call on a home service called agent or said service provider. What are the characteristics, advantages and disadvantages of these different possibilities for employing a housekeeper?
Hiring your own housekeeper yourself offers the advantage of being able to choose the person according to your needs and your own expectations. The housekeeper is indeed a trusted person who comes to the home regularly with whom a privileged relationship can be established. As with any hiring, an individual can use classified ads, job boards or their friendly network to find and hire a housekeeper.
Once the right person has been recruited, as an employer, you have to declare and pay them. The most practical and simplest way for these administrative procedures is to use the Chèque Emploi Service Universel (CESU). It is a free service set up by Urssaf which allows all individuals to pay and declare a home employee in a simple way. This declaration is easily made via the Internet and the individual employer does not have to worry about calculating the compulsory social security contributions to be paid to the State.
All you have to do is declare the hours worked per month by your housekeeper, the CESU National Center then takes care of editing a pay slip. On the other hand, the use of the CESU entitles the particular employer to a tax credit or a tax reduction. From the age of 70, the employer is also exempt from certain employer contributions. For the elderly beneficiaries of the Personalized Independence Allowance (APA), and whose assistance plan defined by this device provides for partial financial support by the services of the department of a home helper, the CESU third-party payment has been set up. The latter allows the recipient of the APA who employs a home helper to pay only the remaining part of the social security contributions due. Those that correspond to the hours and the hourly rate provided for in the APA assistance plan are paid directly by the department concerned at the CESU.
If you want to be the employer of your housekeeper but do not want to take charge of her recruitment and all the administrative acts that ensue, you can call on an agent home help service. This service must be approved by the State, in particular when it comes to an intervention with a vulnerable public. The mandatory home help service has the following missions:
As with direct hiring, the housekeeper is chosen by the person who wishes to employ him and always remains the same. The advantage, on the other hand, is that in the event of absence, the authorized home help service undertakes to offer another person as a replacement.
This administrative processing service has of course a cost for the person who employs a housekeeper, in addition to the salary that he must pay to his employee. This cost can be partly financed by aid granted within the framework of the APA. Employers who pay taxes have the option of subtracting 50% of their expenses for domestic help at home (with a cap on deductible amounts).
If you bring in a home help service provider, you do not take care of anything. It is this service that employs the housekeeper placed at your service and you have no administrative procedure at your expense. On the other hand, you must take charge of your service provider's invoice according to the services rendered. When it comes to intervening with dependent elderly people, these home help services must be recognized by the State or the department.
The costs of these types of services may be subject to various financial aids. As part of the APA for its beneficiaries, through financial aid from pension funds or complementary health insurance. A 50% tax reduction is possible if the home help service provider is authorized by the state or department.
Elderly people who have difficulty performing certain daily tasks, including housework, can employ a housekeeper and receive financial assistance from their department or, failing that, from their pension fund under certain conditions. First, employing a home helper to perform the tasks that you can no longer do should allow you to stay at home. Then, your monthly resources must be less than 803.20 euros if you are alone, 1,246.97 euros if you live as a couple (limits valid on April 1, 2017). To qualify for this financial assistance, you must be at least 65 years old or 60 years old for people recognized as unfit for work. The request must be made to the Communal Center for Social Action in the commune of residence.
It should be noted that this aid from the departments constitutes an advance. They are therefore reimbursable after the death of the beneficiary on his estate if their amount is greater than 46,000 euros.
