Changes coming to pay slips. The Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire presents this Wednesday in the Council of Ministers a plan aimed at simplifying the lives of businesses and ridding them of “red tape”. On the evening of the presentation on Tuesday by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal of measures to “debureaucratize” the administration, intended rather for individuals, Bruno Le Maire observed on France 2 that a business manager can spend up to eight hours per week in the papers, and that “the norm” costs the country three points of GDP per year. “The overall demand is less paperwork,” he said, indicating that the pay slip will be simplified, going from 55 lines to “around fifteen lines.” All information will remain available upon request from the employee, he said on X.

Cerfa administrative forms will be eliminated, 80% of them by 2026. Business leaders will no longer have to send back to Social Security the “15 million” annual sick leave forms for their employees. Bruno Le Maire announced “a spring of simplification” aimed at eradicating each year the standards or rules deemed “useless or too burdensome” by business leaders.

François Asselin, president of the confederation of SMEs (CPME), who had issued 80 simplification proposals in January, told AFP on Tuesday that he “want to believe” in this plan, entitled “Action plan: simplification!” according to Les Échos, which takes 50 measures. The legislative aspect will be examined in the Senate from June 3. The plan should include the “SME test” called for by the CPME, making full-scale tests obligatory before the application of new standards to companies.

François Asselin also hopes for the creation of an “electronic safe” to “not have to give the same information back to the different administrations”, the decriminalization of certain declaration defects, or an expanded use of the “rescript”, it is that is to say the ability to ask an administration to rule on the interpretation of a text, to avoid subsequent legal problems. The one-step increase in social thresholds, desired by the CPME, will not appear there, referred to a Labor law in the fall, according to a source close to the matter.

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This plan is the result of work started in November, with 45 “Simplification meetings” – including three with Bruno Le Maire – organized on the ground by five parliamentarians who produced a report in February submitted to the minister. A citizen consultation on simplifying business life was also carried out at the end of 2023, generating 5,447 proposals.