France employer tax on foreign workers in 2026 and what each non EU hire costs

Every employer who hires a non EU worker in France owes a one off tax set by articles L.436-10 to L.436-13 of the CESEDA. On a contract of twelve months or more it is 55 percent of the gross monthly salary, capped at 2.5 times the SMIC, which is about 2,506.67 euros per hire in 2026 under the tax administration doctrine BOI-TPS-EMOE.

Who collects the tax, and since when

The tax used to be the OFII tax, and many employer checklists still call it that. It is no longer paid to the Office français de l'immigration et de l'intégration. Article 80 of the finance law 2022-1726 moved collection to the Direction générale des finances publiques with effect from 1 January 2023, and the tax administration set out the new mechanics in BOFiP doctrine BOI-TPS-EMOE of 5 July 2023. The legal base did not move: articles L.436-10 to L.436-13 of the CESEDA, with the amounts fixed by articles D.436-1 and D.436-2.

What changed for the finance team is where the declaration lands. The tax is now declared alongside VAT, on the same return as the company's ordinary VAT filings. An employer that is not liable for VAT files separately, and the deadline in that case is 25 February at the latest, for the hires of the previous year. That single line is the one most often missed, because a company with no VAT return has no habit of a February filing.

The trigger is not the arrival of the worker and not the first payslip. The tax becomes due when the employment contract is stamped or when the work authorisation is obtained under article L.5221-2 of the labour code, and it becomes payable at the end of the month following the first day of employment. An employer that budgets the tax for the quarter of the arrival is usually one month late by its own calendar.

What each contract type costs in 2026

The amount depends on the length of the contract and, for short contracts, on where the salary sits against the SMIC. The figures below are the ones in BOI-TPS-EMOE.

Two points in that table are worth reading twice. The cap on the long contract means that a salary above 2.5 times the SMIC does not raise the bill: the tax stops climbing at roughly 2,506.67 euros in 2026, so a senior hire and a mid level hire on a permanent contract cost the same. And the seasonal rate counts a partial month as a full one, so a six month and one week season is billed as seven months, 350 euros rather than 300 euros.

Where the cost lands in the hiring file

The tax is the last line of a work authorisation file, not the first. The employer files the authorisation, the plateforme interrégionale main-d'oeuvre étrangère decides, and only once the authorisation exists does the tax become due. That order matters for a budget, because a refused file costs the preparation time and none of the tax.

The labour market test sits upstream of the same file. A job on the shortage occupation list of the arrêté of 21 May 2025 is decided without it, which is the single largest lever on the timeline rather than on the cost. The rules are set out in the guide to the France shortage occupation list, and the full sequence of the introduction procedure, from the job offer to the arrival of the worker, is in the guide to the French introduction procedure and work authorisation.

The practical failure mode is a group that hires four non EU workers across two subsidiaries and declares the tax once, at group level. The tax is due per employer and per hire. A correction found by the DGFiP two years later carries the arrears plus interest, and the amount is small enough per head that nobody notices it missing until the audit. The volume side of the same question, how many authorisations France actually grants each year, is covered in the note on French immigration quotas. Employers planning a first French hire will find the wider cost and document picture on the employers page.

A non EU hire in France on a permanent contract therefore carries a fixed public cost of about 2,506.67 euros in 2026 on top of the salary and the social contributions, due within a month of the start date and declared with the VAT return. The figure is stable across the year because the cap is set against the SMIC, and it does not vary by region or by occupation.