Should you pay the Taxe d’Apprentissage bill sent by OCTA?

By Valérie Aston on 16 January 2012 · Viewed 8039 times · Questions

Many entrepreneurs have received a tax d’apprentissage bill from OCTA (Organismes Collecteurs de la Taxe d'Apprentissage). Should you be paying this bill and what does it cover?

Tax d’apprentissage is a tax to help finance technological and professional training as well as apprenticeships. Auto-entrepreneurs already pay this tax on a monthly or quarterly basis as part of the Contribution à la Formation Professionnelle (CFP) ranging from 0.1% to 0.3% of their turnover. Auto-entrepreneurs should therefore ignore this bill.

I called OCTA and they confirmed it was sent by mistake and that their system did not make the difference between auto-entrepreneurs and entreprise individuelle under regime reel, which may be liable to this tax.

Taxe d’apprentissage for entreprise individuelle, EIRL, EURL and SARL

Entreprises individuelles under regime reel simplifie, EIRL, EURL and SARL are liable to tax d’apprentissage when they have at least one employee. The apprenticeship tax is assessed on the amount of gross wages paid during a calendar year. The amount considered is the same as that used for the calculation of social contributions.

A portion of the wages paid to apprentices is still exempt. The applicable rate is 0.5%. Taxable wages are rounded to the nearest euro. The payment of Taxe d’Apprentissage must be made before March 1 of each year following the calendar year. Failure to meet deadlines will incur penalty fees.

Taxe d’apprentissage is collected by OCTA, i.e. companies approved by the state to collect and manage the fees. The OCTA recipient of the payment is freely chosen by the company: the organisation may be an association, a group, a federation, a regional chamber.


Valerie Lemiere: Start Business in France

About the author: Valérie Aston

I've been helping people who want to start or already have a small business set up in France since 2009. After graduating from a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree, I worked as a senior marketing consultant in the UK and France for various International companies. I worked as a conseillère en création d'entreprises (senior business advisor) for BGE here in France and run this independent business on a daily basis.