PER: don’t wait until the last moment to pay if you want to reduce your tax!

Do you want to save tax thanks to your retirement savings plan before the end of the year? Don’t delay: between administrative delays and the influx of requests, doing it at the last moment could cause you to lose a valuable tax advantage.

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Last straight line in sight! You only have a few weeks left to reduce the tax on your 2024 income. You have until December 31 to carry out a tax exemption operation. And to reduce your 2024 taxable income, which will appear in your tax return made next spring, the easiest way is undoubtedly to make payments towards your retirement savings plan (PER).

Not only are you saving for the future, but, as a bonus, the amount of your payments is deductible from your taxable income. This tax reduction is limited, but the ceilings are rather generous: an employee can, for example, deduct up to 10% of their income for the year. If you earn 50,000 euros in 2024, you will be able to deduct up to 5,000 euros from this taxable amount, provided you pay the same amount into your PER.

After Christmas, it may already be too late

Be careful, however, because if on paper you have until Tuesday, December 31 to carry out this maneuver, in reality, the timing is tighter. First, the months of November and December concentrate the greatest number of requests for opening PER and payments of the year, processing times can therefore be extended. In addition, even during off-peak periods, there is always a delay between the time you make the payment and the time it is recorded. Thus, by proceeding on December 31, you take the risk that your deposit will not be recorded until January 1 or 2: it will therefore not be able to be deducted from your 2024 income.

Fortunately, every year, “insurance companies communicate the subscription and payment deadlines, so that these operations are taken into account for the current year”reassures Gilles Belloir, general manager of Placement-direct.fr. At this online broker, these dates are, for example, already known and communicated to clients: for one of the two PERs that it distributes – PER Placement-direct, ensured by SwissLife -, payments for the year 2024 will be possible until ‘At December 30. But the deadline may be shorter, “on our Direct Placement ISR Retirement product insured by the UMR, the deadline will be December 26»warns the expert.

Also, be extra careful if your contract is not a digital PER, and you need to go to an agency: “Traditional networks tend to stop registering new memberships and payouts earlier because registration times are longer”warns Gilles Belloir. If you want to be sure not to miss the boat, do not hesitate to contact the distributor of your contract or your insurer as soon as possible, in order to definitely benefit from your tax reduction. Otherwise, you will have to wait until the 2026 tax return to benefit from it!