What the business already pays

Before looking for ways to fund training, look at what already leaves. On a payroll of 300 000 €, a ten-person business pays over 3 600 € a year towards training and apprenticeship, without anyone ever seeing it on a payslip.

Two separate levies, one shared base

Every business with staff on its books funds vocational training through two separate levies charged on gross payroll. The first supports continuing training for employees already in post, the second apprenticeship and technological and vocational courses.

They are distinct and do not follow the same rules. The training levy varies with headcount; the apprenticeship levy splits into two fractions, one of which the employer allocates itself to a chosen institution.

Crossing the headcount threshold has no immediate effect at all: smoothing rules cushion the impact over the first year. An employer hiring an eleventh member of staff does not therefore see the levy double from one month to the next.

The headcount used is not the number of live contracts but an annual average, computed month by month under its own counting rules. Apprentices and a few other categories are left out, which sometimes keeps a business below the threshold.

The base is gross payroll, the same one used for social security contributions. Collection goes through the monthly social return, like any contribution, with no separate tax return to produce.

That method of collection explains why these sums stay so completely invisible. They appear neither on a tax assessment nor on any payslip, and a great many owners discover that they exist only when they start looking for money to fund a course.

Short contracts and local law

A further levy applies to the remuneration paid to holders of fixed-term contracts. It funds the personal training account of employees whose working lives are, by their very nature, considerably more fragmented than those of others.

Some short contracts are excluded: apprenticeship contracts, professional training contracts, seasonal contracts, and those continuing into a permanent contract. Counting is therefore done contract by contract, never in bulk.

The apprenticeship levy itself splits into two unequal fractions. The main part funds apprenticeship directly; the remainder, much smaller, goes to institutions the employer designates itself.

That power of allocation is the only point in the whole system where a business chooses where its money goes. A school, an apprentice training centre or an integration body can receive it on simple designation.

The local law of Alsace and Moselle applies a reduced apprenticeship rate, and the whole of the sum then falls under the main fraction alone. There is therefore no remainder left to allocate for any of the establishments concerned.

An exemption tied to apprenticeship

An employer with at least one apprentice may be exempt from the apprenticeship levy for a given month, provided its payroll for that month stays below a ceiling expressed in euros.

The exemption is assessed month by month, not across the year. A business whose payroll crosses the ceiling in December because of bonuses becomes liable for that month alone, without losing the benefit of the earlier ones.

A supplementary levy also strikes large businesses employing too few apprentices and trainees. It does not concern small structures, but it explains why large groups recruit so heavily on work-study contracts.

All of these levies follow the calendar of the monthly social return, with a reconciliation at the end of the year. An error of headcount or of base is therefore corrected through an amended return, and never by way of a tax claim.