France — Calendrier de travail, salaire et TVA

France runs on a thirty-five-hour legal workweek (la durée légale du travail), enshrined in the labour code since the late 1990s. Most office-based employees actually work between thirty-seven and thirty-nine hours, and the difference between the legal week and the contractually agreed one is compensated through the well-known RTT system (réduction du temps de travail), which converts the extra hours into additional days of paid leave. A typical French executive can therefore accumulate eight to twelve RTT days per year on top of statutory annual leave.

Statutory paid leave in France is among the most generous in Europe at five weeks of annual leave (congés payés), accruable from the first day of employment and counted in working days under the strict French definition that includes Saturdays. When combined with RTT and the eleven public holidays, a senior employee in France can plan around forty to fifty paid days off per year, which significantly affects realistic project capacity.

Workplace culture remains formal in writing and traditional in hierarchy but warm and collaborative in person. The vouvoiement (formal you) is still common in initial business correspondence even between peers of similar age, and switching to the informal tutoiement is generally proposed by the more senior person. Long lunch breaks of an hour or more are still standard outside Paris, and the French five o'clock workday is genuine: scheduling a video call after six in the evening for a French team without warning will routinely fail.

France observes eleven public holidays at the national level, including New Year's Day, Easter Monday, Labour Day, Victory in Europe Day on 8 May, Ascension, Whit Monday, Bastille Day on 14 July, Assumption on 15 August, All Saints' Day on 1 November, Armistice Day on 11 November and Christmas Day. Boxing Day on 26 December is a public holiday only in the Alsace-Moselle region, which preserves several historical religious holidays from when the region was part of the German Empire in the late nineteenth century.

The May calendar is famously holiday-heavy. With Labour Day and Victory in Europe Day a week apart, plus Ascension Thursday and often Whit Monday in the same month, the French phenomenon of faire le pont (making the bridge) sees many companies effectively shut down or operate at half-capacity for several four-day weekends in succession. Industrial output figures from May are usually adjusted downwards in macroeconomic releases for exactly this reason.

When a public holiday falls on a Sunday in France, it does not generate a substitute weekday off, unlike the British or Belgian practice. This explains why the apparent number of usable holidays in any given year varies between eight and eleven depending on the calendar configuration. Project planners working multi-year schedules should always check the actual day of the week each holiday falls on rather than assume a constant deduction from working capacity.

French gross salary (salaire brut) is the most commonly quoted figure in employment offers, but the gap between brut and net is significant. Employee social contributions cover health, pension, unemployment and several smaller schemes and total roughly twenty to twenty-three percent of gross. Beyond these, the prélèvement à la source mechanism means income tax is withheld monthly at a rate calculated by the tax authority based on the previous year's return, so the personalised tax rate visible on the payslip can vary considerably between two employees with the same gross salary.

Employer-side costs in France are among the highest in the EU. The full employer cost (salaire chargé) is typically forty to fifty percent above the gross salary, with the spread depending on the company's collective agreement, regional location and the level of the employee's salary relative to the social security ceiling (plafond mensuel de la sécurité sociale, currently around 3,925 euros per month). A senior salary above the ceiling triggers a different contribution structure that materially changes the cost calculation.

France distinguishes sharply between cadre and non-cadre status, with cadre being roughly equivalent to a managerial or executive role. Cadres pay slightly higher pension contributions to the supplementary scheme but enjoy a longer notice period, longer trial period eligibility and additional unemployment insurance through APEC. When pricing a French hire, the cadre status is not just a title; it has measurable payroll implications that should be confirmed before signing the contract.

France operates a layered VAT (TVA) system with a standard rate of twenty percent, an intermediate rate of ten percent (renovation work, restaurants, public transport, certain cultural events), a reduced rate of 5.5 percent (basic food, books, school canteens, gas and electricity) and a super-reduced rate of 2.1 percent (reimbursable medication, the press, certain live performances). The four-layer structure is one of the more complex in Europe and a frequent source of error in international invoicing systems built around a single reduced rate.

Mandatory invoice content in France includes the supplier's full identification, the customer's full identification, an invoice date, a sequential invoice number, supply date if different, full description of goods or services, unit price excluding tax, applied discounts, applicable VAT rate, total excluding tax, total VAT and total including tax. From 2026 onward, electronic invoicing through certified intermediary platforms becomes mandatory for B2B transactions in France, replacing the historical PDF-by-email model.

The French micro-entrepreneur regime offers a simplified VAT exemption for very small service businesses below 39,100 euros of annual turnover and for goods sales below 91,900 euros (figures applicable for 2025-2026). Above those thresholds, full VAT registration becomes mandatory with quarterly or monthly returns depending on turnover. Many freelancers actively choose to leave the micro regime as soon as they begin invoicing larger French companies that strongly prefer suppliers who can issue VAT-bearing invoices.

August in France is genuinely quiet. The national tradition of summer vacation in August is so dominant that many small businesses, particularly in Paris, simply close for two to four weeks. Plan no critical decision points or onboarding processes between mid-July and the last week of August, and assume that responsiveness from French counterparts will be measured in days rather than hours during that window.

When budgeting a French hire, work backwards from the salaire chargé (full employer cost) rather than the salaire brut (gross). The local recruitment market discusses gross salaries, but the company budget impact of a forty-five thousand euro gross hire is closer to sixty-five or seventy thousand euros once mandatory employer contributions are included.

If your business invoices French clients regularly, prepare for the e-invoicing rollout that becomes mandatory for B2B transactions during 2026. Choosing a certified intermediary platform (PDP or OD) should be done well before the deadline to avoid disruption to billing cycles, and accounting software providers in France are already publishing migration guides.