What is a meal voucher?
Luncheon vouchers are specific means of payment, purchased by employers from specialised organisations and distributed to employees who co-finance them and use them to pay for their meals at an affiliated merchant.
Who benefits from meal vouchers?
The potential beneficiaries are :
- Employees (permanent, fixed-term, full-time, part-time)
- Temporary workers
- The trainees
Good to know: the company can allocate meal vouchers to its managers and officers:
- subject to the application of the texts governed by the URSSAF
- the meal vouchers must also be allocated to the company's employees
Financing of the meal voucher
Restaurant vouchers are financed in part by the employer and in part by the beneficiary employee.
To be exempt from social security contributions, the employer's contribution to the financing of the acquisition of meal vouchers must respect two limits:
- be between 50 and 60% of the face value of the meal voucher
- the exempted share must not exceed 6.50 € (in 2023)
Thus, to benefit from the exemption of charges, if the employer pays 50% of the meal voucher, the maximum amount of the voucher will be 13 € and if the employer pays 60% of the voucher, the amount will be 10.83 €.
What are the rules for using meal vouchers?
When to use meal vouchers
The meal vouchers can be used from Monday to Saturday, at any time! If your employees work on Sundays and public holidays, they can use their Worklife card on those days too.
How much to spend?
Your employees can use up to €25 of meal vouchers per day. Unlike paper, there's no minimum amount (except for the shopkeeper's), and they pay for their purchases to the nearest cent! So it's perfectly possible to pay for a croissant at the bakery with the Worklife card.
Where to use them
Most issuers offer an exclusive network, requiring restaurateurs to be affiliated to the CNTR. Worklife meal vouchers are accepted everywhere: in over 220,000 restaurants, bakeries and even supermarkets.
Benefits of meal vouchers
Restaurant vouchers are so successful because they offer so many advantages for employers, employees and restaurateurs:
- As anemployer, you meet your legal obligation to provide employee catering at a lower cost. You reward and motivate your employees by making substantial savings compared to a salary increase, thanks to the possibility of an exemption from social security charges on the vouchers and their non-taxation.
- Employees increase their purchasing power thanks to a tax-free salary supplement. What's more, they can choose the meal they want from a huge selection of retailers, rather than being obliged to follow the imposed menu of a collective catering structure,
- The restaurant owner gains an additional and regular clientele, necessarily solvent. The Worklife solution is part of a social and solidarity-based approach. It is the only issuer of restaurant vouchers that does not charge restaurant owners any commission.
