Self-Employed PER: Cut Taxes While Preparing for Retirement
The self-employed often have a lower pension than employees, for comparable contributions. The Retirement Savings Plan (PER) addresses this dual challenge: it helps you build capital for your later years while reducing your tax today. For a taxed freelancer, it is one of the few genuinely effective tax-reduction tools. Here is how it works.
The mechanism: deduct to save
The principle of the individual PER is simple. You pay money into a retirement-dedicated contract; these contributions are deductible from your taxable income, within certain limits. In plain terms, every euro paid reduces the base on which your tax is calculated.
The tax saving depends on your marginal tax rate:
| Your marginal rate | Saving for €1,000 paid |
|---|---|
| 11% | €110 |
| 30% | €300 |
| 41% | €410 |
| 45% | €450 |
The higher your bracket, the stronger the advantage. That is why the PER is particularly relevant for heavily taxed self-employed. It logically features among our tax optimisation levers.
A higher deduction ceiling for the self-employed
All taxpayers benefit from a deduction ceiling linked to the PASS (annual Social Security ceiling, set at €48,060 in 2026). But non-salaried workers (TNS) have a specific, more generous ceiling, heir to the old Madelin contracts.
This TNS ceiling combines a part calculated on the PASS and a part proportional to your taxable profit, which allows, for high incomes, deducting amounts markedly higher than an employee's. Unused ceilings from one year can also be carried over to following years, within a certain limit.
In a micro-enterprise, where profit is determined after allowance, the ceiling calculation follows specific rules: check your situation precisely before contributing.
What happens at the exit?
The tax advantage on entry has a counterpart at the exit. At retirement, you can recover your savings:
- as capital (in one or several payments);
- as a life annuity;
- or a mix of the two.
The exit taxation depends on the chosen option and whether you deducted your contributions on entry. In short, the tax saved during your working life is partly "returned" at the exit — but the operation remains advantageous if your marginal rate is lower at retirement than while working, which is frequent.
The early-release cases
PER savings are in principle locked until retirement. That is its logical counterpart. The law does, however, provide for early-release cases:
- the purchase of the main residence;
- life accidents (disability, spouse's death, over-indebtedness, end of unemployment rights, cessation of non-salaried activity following judicial liquidation).
These exit doors reassure: your savings are not totally inaccessible in case of hardship.
Key takeaway: the PER is the best tax-reduction tool for a taxed self-employed person, especially above the 30% bracket. It combines immediate tax reduction and building a supplementary pension.
Before committing, assess your marginal rate and saving capacity: the PER only has a tax benefit if you are actually taxed. First understand your base pension with our guide to the micro-entrepreneur pension, then supplement it intelligently.