The Ifrap Le Figaro rating
The ceiling for restaurant tickets at 38 euros has been extended.
Until February 28, 2022, it will therefore still be possible to pay amounts up to
38 euros
with restaurant tickets or restaurant card.
Another good news is that it will still be possible to use meal vouchers on Sundays and public holidays.
As of January 1, 2021, Bercy estimated that the French had accumulated savings of nearly 700 million euros in restaurant tickets and cards because of confinements and teleworking.
Currently, this reserve can be estimated at around 300 million euros.
Read alsoReal estate savings are making a success again
At the end of the spring 2020 containment, the state announced it wanted to help restaurants by allowing their employee customers to pay in meal vouchers up to 38 euros. The ceiling was previously set at 19 euros. The temporary measure was to be stopped on August 31, but this increase in the ceiling is finally extended until February 2022. It is a measure that goes in the right direction, but why still keep a ceiling? Why not free up more use of meal vouchers, especially at a time when some restaurants are suffering from the introduction of health passes and teleworking…
With the extension of this ceiling increase, the State is trying to show flexibility.
But the measure tastes of too little.
If the desire was really to help restaurateurs and boost the purchasing power of employees, then why not quite simply jump this ceiling both for payments in restaurants and raise it in food stores since teleworking is one or more several days a week seems to be becoming the norm in many industries?
In April 2020, remember that the Ministry of Labor announced that the ceiling for the use of meal vouchers would go from 19 to 95 euros to pay for shopping.
But this measure never became effective.
Bercy clearly blocked.
A very supervised system
Restaurant tickets are highly regulated in our country: the employer's contribution to these titles is only exempt up to 5.55 euros and has been frozen for 2 years (2020 and 2021). And for this exemption to be recognized, the employer contribution must constitute between 50 and 60% of the value of the meal voucher. A restaurant ticket can in theory only be used in the daily working schedule, finally, it is personal and cannot be transferred. In short, everything is done to make the use as easy as possible.
The administration supervises in all directions.
In 2014, with the launch of restaurant voucher cards which allow employees to pay for lunch directly.
These cards are capped at 19 euros per day and their use is limited in time to midday and working days.
Today, only 30% of employees use a card, but in the long term, the tax administration would like to see paper tickets disappear in favor of these cards which make it possible to control their use much more.
There had even been, for a time, a question of a generalization for 2020.
To read also “Sorry, we don't take them anymore”: why some restaurants don't want your restaurant tickets
The real fear of the administration is the use of restaurant vouchers as a component of remuneration and fraud… although there is no estimate of the latter. Moreover, the notion of “fraud” in this matter is very broad for the Labor Inspectorate. In March 2018,
Challenges
reported the case of an SME boss who received a letter from the Labor Inspectorate about one of his employees who used an 8 euro ticket in a McDonald's… on a Sunday. Thus, each employee who has used a meal ticket on a day when he is not working, in a department where he does not work or who has given a meal ticket to someone else is a fraudster. But whoever gives a meal ticket to the Red Cross is not a fraud. Oddly enough, a restaurant ticket cannot be used to buy basic, unprocessed food (although very useful in the event of confinement). Understand who can.
If the 6-month extension of the ceiling of 38 euros is a good thing as well as the use of tickets on public holidays, it seems incomprehensible not to release more these some 300 million euros still hoarded on cards and tickets continued to the Covid crisis by raising the ceiling at least until February. With the health crisis, this is what the Austrians did by removing their ceiling for use, which was one ticket per day. Belgium does not have a limit on use either. The French restaurant ticket remains, for its part, well locked. Obviously, the will to control and the fear of fraud from the administration are stronger than the stated objective of giving the French the opportunity to consume more ...
