Autoentrepreneur

   New business structure introduced in 2009, to encourage entrepreneurship in France. The system has proved even more successful than predicted, and hundreds of thousands of people signed up for the new status in the first six months. The great attraction and innovation of this system is its simplicity. In the past, setting up as a sole trader or self-employed in France was a very complex formality, involving registration with at least three different organisations (depending on the nature of the work), for tax , social security and health service benefits; it was also fiscally heavy, with high contributions to the various "caisses", bearing no relation at all to actual earnings during the first two years.

   The new "statut de l'autoentrepreneur" has done away with all this; signing up is a simple process, done on line, and those choosing this status have one single periodic payment to make, covering all their social security and health contribution charges, and even income tax. Payments are strictly based on actual earnings, so a self employed person who earned only 10 Euros in a poor month now pays his social security charge as a proportion of the sum actually earned. There are three contribution rates , depending on the nature of the activity, sales, services or professional consultancy.

   Anyone can sign up for this new status, which covers not only the self employed, but also those who have a job with an employer, but also wish to undertake entrepreneurial activities as a sideline.

   A secondary advantage of this new system has been to bring into the system people who previously did the odd job on the side here and there, but never declared these earnings, on account of the complexity and expense of the previous systems..