Becoming a household employer

You pay 14 € an hour to the person who looks after your children, and you assume that settles it. That is where it starts: employer contributions sit on top of that rate, a tax credit sits underneath it, and between the two lies a scheme that files the paperwork for you without ever becoming the employer in your place.

The Cesu files returns, it does not hire

The universal service employment cheque is a filing service, not a placement agency. When you use it, nobody stands between you and the person working in your home. You remain the employer, with everything that word carries: hiring, the contract, the instructions given, and the ending of the relationship.

This distinction is not a matter of vocabulary. It decides who answers for an accident, who owes an end-of-contract payment, and who faces an employment tribunal claim. An employer who believes the duty was delegated discovers these answers at the worst possible moment, usually when the relationship ends badly.

What the scheme handles is narrowly defined: it computes contributions from what you declare, collects them, issues the employee's payslip and sends it out. It checks neither your hourly rate, nor the hours you report, nor whether you comply with the applicable collective agreement.

In other words, a filing that is accepted without difficulty may still carry a wage below the applicable minimum or omit a premium that was owed. The service will reject nothing at all. The gap surfaces only in a dispute, and it is then settled through back pay covering several years.

Who may be employed, and to do what

The activities covered are those performed at your home and for you: cleaning, ironing, childcare above the age of three, tutoring, help for elderly or disabled people, light gardening, short do-it-yourself jobs, home computer support. The list is not a suggestion; it is the boundary of the tax advantage.

• The work is carried out at your private home, or in its immediate surroundings
• The service benefits you or your household, never a business activity of yours
• The person employed is not registered as a business for that particular service
• The activity appears among those the scheme expressly recognises

Three very common situations fall outside. Care of a child under six by a registered childminder belongs to a different filing service. Using a service company is bought against an invoice, with no employment contract at all. And employing a dependent relative of the same tax household opens no entitlement whatsoever.

The most frequent confusion sets direct employment against agency mandates. Some organisations recruit on your behalf while leaving you the employer; others employ the worker themselves and invoice you. Both are advertised in much the same words in a brochure, and they do not create the same obligations.

The contract, the collective agreement and the payslip

The household employment sector has its own collective agreement. It sets minimum wages by job, frames hours of responsible presence, and organises leave and termination. Where its minimum exceeds the statutory one, it is the one that applies: the rule retained is always the more favourable to the employee.

The payslip the service issues is not decorative paperwork. It is the employee's evidence for pension rights, unemployment benefit and sickness payments. A year declared too low permanently reduces entitlements that nobody will reconstruct afterwards, however willing they may be to help.

Benefits in kind must be declared too. A meal provided and accommodation made available are wages, valued on a flat-rate basis. Leaving them out amounts to under-declaring, with the usual twofold consequence: reduced entitlements for the employee, and a possible reassessment for you.

Finally, the relationship ends like any other employment contract. Notice runs, a payment may be owed, and final documents must be handed over. The filing service accompanies that exit but does not organise it: knowing the steps before reaching them remains your responsibility entirely.