The universal service employment check (CESU) is a service made available to individuals who employ helpers, most often at home, as part of a personal service for household chores, light gardening work, elderly care, etc. The CESU aims to simplify the procedures for private employers, in particular with regard to the declaration of these employees at home and the calculation of their salary. How does the CESU work?
The universal service employment check (CESU) is a system set up by Urssaf intended to facilitate the declaration and remuneration procedures for individuals who employ employees at home to help them with the tasks of daily life.
A home-based employee can carry out domestic tasks (cleaning, meal preparation, ironing, small gardening or DIY, etc.), but also support, for example, an elderly person in his or her daily activities, with the exception acts of care in the medical sector. The CESU can also be used for activities carried out outside the home, such as the shopping needed to prepare meals, helping an elderly person move around (on foot, by car, on public transport, etc.) for his administrative procedures, his walks, or even the care of pets. A home-based employee employed thanks to the CESU takes charge of tasks that are solely related to personal services.
An elderly person who lives with a foster family can also use the CESU to pay them and declare them to the Urssaf services.
Declaring an employee at home with the CESU allows the individual employer to be able to remunerate him easily without having to carry out complicated procedures with regard in particular to the social obligations which are incumbent on all employers, without needing to establish necessarily an employment contract and a pay slip, but the CESU also guarantees that its employee has social rights such as those relating to health insurance, unemployment, retirement, etc.
The CESU has the advantage of being able to be used for a home-based employee who comes to work regularly, on an ad hoc basis, full-time or part-time. This system also entitles the individual employer to a tax benefit:a tax credit equal to 50% of the expenses incurred, up to an annual limit of 12,000 euros, possibly increased.
The CESU system takes the form of an online service that can be used on a computer, tablet or smartphone, a very practical solution.
To benefit from the services of the CESU, it is first necessary to create a personal account on www.cesu.urssaf.fr, a very simple and quick operation, which first allows you to fill in the information concerning your employee (name , first name, address, social security number). These are kept in memory to avoid you having to enter them for each declaration.
Nevertheless, individual employers who do not wish to go through this dematerialized procedure can register for the CESU system by means of a membership application form available from their banking establishment or from their Urssaf services, and , then declare their employee at home every month on the dedicated site.
Once this information has been recorded, an interface allows you to declare the hours worked by your employee at home every month by entering the month of work concerned and the number of hours worked.
This process can also be carried out on paper, the "social section of the CESU" provided by the organization where you registered (bank or Urssaf).
The CESU site then directly calculates the amount of the net salary due, as well as the contributions and social security contributions for which you are liable.
For some time now, a new service offered by the CESU (the CESU +) has made the process even easier for individual employers. Once the working hours of your employee at home have been declared, the CESU + debits directly from your bank account on the one hand the net salary due, which it transfers directly to your employee's account, and on the other the contributions to pay to Urssaf.
Private employers who do not activate the CESU + must continue to pay their employee directly at home either in cash (up to a limit of 1,500 euros), by transfer, check or using the "pre-financed CESU", a means of payment pre-financed in whole or in part by an employer, a social and economic committee (CSE), a funding organization such as a departmental council, a pension fund, a communal center for social action (CCAS), etc.
