The universal service employment check (CESU) is a means of payment and declaration used for personal service jobs. It is a simplified way to hire and declare a person who works from home for certain small jobs.
A double boon for seniors:the CESU makes it easier for them, on the one hand, to hire someone in their home to help them in their daily life or on an ad hoc basis and, on the other hand, it is also a facility that they can use for themselves if they wish to continue working after retirement.
Created in 2006 to promote the development of personal services, the employment-service check is a simplified system aimed at individuals to facilitate the hiring of a home-based employee. The CESU makes it possible to simplify the procedures for hiring, paying and declaring a person who provides a home service. It is an easy-to-use and reliable process for both the individual employer and the employee.
For seniors, the CESU represents an easy way to get help at home with housework, shopping or gardening, for example. The employment-service check can also be used to remunerate a person who offers home computer assistance, administrative assistance or nursing services. By promoting the use of home helpers, the service employment voucher is very well suited to seniors who want to stay at home as long as possible, while benefiting from occasional services to help them.
But the service employment check can also be used by a senior who wishes to continue working after retirement to improve his income. Many sectors of activity, including personal services, can offer employment opportunities to seniors such as DIY, gardening, tutoring or home-sitting, for example. By offering their employer the possibility of hiring them with a service employment voucher, the senior increases their chances of finding extra work.
To benefit from the CESU, the individual employer must create an account with the CESU National Center directly online, with the Urssaf on which he depends or with his banking establishment. Two solutions are then possible:either he chooses to declare his employee on the Internet on the CESU site, or he does so via a section of the CESU paper notebook, made up of twenty social sections, issued by the National Center for CESU following its adhesion to the device.
Using service employment vouchers does not, however, exempt you from the obligation to establish an employment contract and to respect the rules of labor law. The collective agreement of the particular employer, however, provides for exceptions if you call on the services of a person very occasionally, for a period of less than eight hours. In this case, the employment-service check itself takes the place of the employment contract.
The individual employer decides alone on the amount of salary he pays. However, it must not be lower than the minimum hourly wage in force (8.35 euros net on the 1 st January 2018). Remuneration must also include a 10% increase in paid leave. The employer must declare the remuneration of his employee every month to the CESU National Centre, which then calculates and deducts social security contributions. For his part, the employee receives a payslip.
Some seniors benefit from so-called pre-financed CESUs, through their departmental council or their pension fund, for example. In concrete terms, these are nominative payment vouchers in the form of a check with a predefined amount. With these pre-financed cheques, senior beneficiaries can pay a person employed at their home, but also pay the bill of a declared or approved personal services organization, such as companies delivering meals to homes or which take care of loads the ironing. This last possibility is not possible with a non-prefinanced employment-service check, which is called "declarative" to differentiate it.
