CPME denounces “disguised” tax increases for VSEs/SMEs

VSEs/SMEs “will be the most impacted”, maintains François Asselin if exemptions from social charges are revised like aid for hiring apprentices.

The CPME denounces tax increases on Tuesday October 8 on franceinfo “disguised” for VSEs/SMEs. The Prime Minister announced temporary tax increases for some 300 big businesses. But for François Asselin, president of the Confederation of Small and Medium Enterprises, VSEs/SMEs “will be the most impacted” by suffering the effect of two measures studied by the government: the revision of exemptions from social charges and the revision of aid for hiring apprentices.

“When we talk, for example, about returning to the curve of reducing social charges, it is SMEs which will be the first to be impacted. When we want to return to measures to support apprenticeships, it is the SMEs which will be the most impacted”insists the CPME. “It’s a slightly disguised, almost even insidious way of broadening the base to find budgetary margins”denounces François Asselin.

“Let’s not miss the target” warns the president of the CPME. “Those who make our territory rich are the SMEs and the VSEs.” According to François Asselin, these measures will lead to “job destruction, sometimes business closures”particularly in the cleanliness, personal service, security, “in companies with a high labor rate”. According to a project presented to trade union organizations, the reform of reductions in employer contributions should bring 5 billion euros in 2025 to the state coffers, in search of 60 billion euros to complete the budget.

The government is considering eliminating a waiting day to reduce the cost of sick leave. “Our health insurance is a common goodrecalls François Asselin. And we have lost the sense of the common good, that is to say we take health insurance as a drawing right. Indeed, we see that short-term sick leave is increasing sharply. Are the French made of sugar: as soon as there is a drop they start to melt? I don’t think so.”

“What we recommend at the CPME is three days of waiting time, whatever the active status and why not one day of public order that we could not be reimbursed.”

François Asselin, president of the CPME

at franceinfo

“I think there really is a structural problem, continues François Asselin. A figure: the rate of absenteeism in the public sector is 15 days on average. In the commercial sector, the private sector, it is 12 days. When you are independent, business manager, there are four million in France anyway, that’s two and a half days. This simply means that we are very generous in terms of access to sick leave.”

More generally, the president of the CPME denounces a budgetary roadmap “unclear” and launches an appeal to the Minister of the Budget, Laurent Saint-Martin: “Give us your strategic plan on reducing savings”. “We have levers to get out of this”assures, optimistically, François Asselin. The finance bill for 2025 is presented to the Council of Ministers on Thursday.