Madelin PER simulator: self-employed retirement and profit deduction

Simulate your Madelin PER

The simulator estimates your retirement capital and the tax saving according to your marginal tax rate. Your data is neither stored nor transmitted.

Why the self-employed have a lever an employee does not

The self-employed worker lives a singular tax reality: their profit is fully taxable, without the employee’s 10% deduction safety net, and their years are irregular — an exceptional year can throw them abruptly into the 45% bracket. The Madelin PER was designed to absorb precisely these peaks: it lets you neutralise a substantial slice of taxable profit in the year it costs the most.

The self-employed ceiling is not a technical detail: it changes the very nature of the tool. Where an employee is capped at 10% of income, a high-profit self-employed earner can deduct tens of thousands of euros, because the calculation adds 15% of the slice of profit between 1 and 8 PASS. The higher the profit, the more the deduction capacity expands — the exact opposite of the employee logic.

But this power turns against the badly advised self-employed worker. The old Madelin forced you to contribute every year, including the lean ones; the PER reform removed that constraint. The self-employed can now contribute heavily in the good years and ease off in the others. Without steering, they waste allowance in the lean years and miss the bumper ones.

The 3 levers your accountant does not steer alone

Lever 1 — time the contribution to the exceptional-profit year

A record-profit year is also the one where your top bracket reaches 41 or 45%. It is the year when every deducted euro saves you the most. The Madelin ceiling, calculated on that high profit, is itself at its peak: the window is doubly favourable. Contributing heavily that year, rather than spreading evenly, can transform the tax bill. The catch is you must anticipate the result before year-end — the joint work of the advisor and the accountant, not one without the other.

Lever 2 — arbitrate between the Madelin frame and the voluntary-contribution frame

The PER offers the self-employed two deduction compartments: the Madelin “category” ceiling, calculated on profit, and the ordinary voluntary-contribution ceiling, calculated on income. The two are not offset in the same way and do not carry forward identically. Optimising means knowing which to saturate first according to the composition of your income — manager’s remuneration, dividends, BNC. An allocation error can forfeit part of the deduction you expected.

Lever 3 — align the PER with cash extraction and dividends

For a self-employed manager, the PER cannot be thought of in isolation: it fits into the overall trade-off between salary, dividends and retirement savings. Paying into the PER reduces taxable profit and therefore, depending on your status, the social-contribution base. But this logic must be aligned with your distribution strategy and the bracket differential on exit. It is a multi-storey calculation that the headline deduction, taken alone, never reflects.

Worked example — Dr Vasseur, 52, self-employed dental surgeon in Nantes

Dr Vasseur, a liberal professional taxed on BNC profit, generates a profit of around €180,000 and sits at a 45% marginal rate. He decides to pay €25,000 into his Madelin PER in a high-profit year. Here is the effect of the contribution.

The €25,000 contribution really costs Dr Vasseur only €13,750: the State funds the remaining €11,250 through the deduction, in the very year his bracket is at its highest. The Madelin slice of his ceiling — built on a €180,000 profit — would in fact have let him deduct more still. Over a career, by concentrating these contributions on the bumper years, the cumulative saving runs into tens of thousands of euros.

The lesson is specific to the self-employed: it is not the amount paid in that creates the tax performance, it is the moment you pay it. Contributing evenly every year, as the old Madelin required, would have diluted the benefit. Year-by-year steering, calibrated against actual profit, makes all the difference.

A markedly higher deduction ceiling

Where an employee is capped at 10% of income, the self-employed worker enjoys a more generous calculation: 10% of the annual Social Security ceiling, plus 15% of the slice of profit between 1 and 8 PASS. In practice, a self-employed earner with a high profit can deduct several tens of thousands of euros a year.

This advantage makes it one of the most powerful tax-cutting levers for the liberal professions and self-employed managers, especially in high-profit years.

Steering contributions to match income

The strength of the scheme is its flexibility: since the PER reform you are no longer required to contribute every year (unlike the old Madelin). You can therefore modulate — contributing heavily in the good years, easing off in the others — to optimise the deduction against your marginal rate.

Fine-tuning these contributions, in tandem with your accountant and your advisor, makes a genuine difference to the tax bill across a self-employed career.

The self-employed deduction is a weapon — provided you aim it

This simulator quantifies the retirement capital and the tax saving on the deductible portion. But optimising as a self-employed worker is not a matter of one amount: it plays out in the timing of contributions, the arbitrage between deduction compartments, the alignment with your remuneration and dividends, and the steering of the exit. These decisions, taken at the right moment, are worth far more than the choice of fund.

Balmont Conseil is an independent wealth-management firm, a member of ANACOFI, with no capital ties to a bank or an insurance company. This independence lets us select the contract across the whole market and work hand in hand with your accountant, in your interest alone — not a network’s. Run your projection above, then book a call to structure your self-employed retirement strategy.

Frequently asked questions

What is the self-employed deduction ceiling on the Madelin PER?

The self-employed ceiling is markedly higher than an employee’s: 10% of the annual Social Security ceiling (PASS), plus 15% of the slice of your profit between 1 and 8 PASS. In practice, the higher your profit, the greater your deduction capacity — a high-earning self-employed worker can deduct several tens of thousands of euros a year.

Must I contribute every year as with the old Madelin?

No, and that is the major gain of the PER reform. The old Madelin contract required regular contributions on pain of losing seniority. The PER removed that constraint: you modulate freely, contributing heavily in the good years and easing off in the others. This flexibility is precisely what makes steering contributions so profitable for a self-employed worker with irregular income.

Does the contribution also reduce my social contributions?

The Madelin PER deduction is applied to taxable profit, which lowers your income tax. Depending on your status and the nature of your income, the effect on the social-contribution base varies. This is a point to analyse precisely with your advisor and your accountant, as it forms part of the overall salary / dividends / retirement-savings trade-off specific to self-employed managers.

How does the exit work at retirement?

As with the individual PER, you exit as a lump sum, an annuity, or a blend. The portion matching your deducted contributions is added back to income tax; the gains are taxed at the 31.4% flat tax (PFU). Early release to buy your main residence remains available. The benefit rests on the differential between your bracket today and at retirement.