Understanding Garnishments

When a payee owes money to a third-party for alimony, tax debts, or other obligations, the employer may be required to deduct part of what is owed before the payee receives payment. This deduction, known as a garnishment, is taken every month, according to national guidelines. The size of the deduction depends on the payee's earnings and the number of dependents.

There are two types of garnishments: alimony and other debts. Alimony deductions take priority over other debts when a payee's earnings are not sufficient to cover multiple garnishments.

Other debts fall into the following three categories, which are listed in the order of processing priority:

1. Tax debts.

2. Penal sentences.

3. Ordinary debts.

In cases where there is more than one garnishment for the same type of debt (for example, three deductions for alimony), the system prioritizes deductions based on the order in which you entered them, rather than deducting a prorated amount for each debt.

A payee's earnings can be split into attachable an unattachable amounts.

The attachable amount of a payee's income is the part that may be garnished:

• Obligatory attachable amount.

  The obligatory attachable amount includes severance allowance, retirement pay over the taxable limit of 3049 euros, and profit-sharing allowances. These amounts are completely attachable and do not follow the usual garnishment calculation rules.

• Obligatory unattachable amount.

  The obligatory unattachable amount consists of reimbursements of professional expenses (not including creditors), family allowances paid by the employer (not including creditors), and the RMI (legal minimum subsistence wage), which the government sets annually.

  If there is not enough money to pay alimony from the attachable portion of the salary, it may be taken from the unattachable amount, provided the payee's salary doesn't fall below the RMI. Only alimony payments may be taken from this portion of the salary.

• Attachable amount.

  Always place a garnishment against the attachable amount of a payee's earnings. The system uses a bracket element to calculate the attachable amount.

By law, garnishments cannot be recalculated during retroactive processing.

To prevent recalculation of the delivered garnishment elements, Global Payroll for France uses the array RTO AR RESULT PAIE to retrieve the original value of the garnishments in the payroll result tables whenever there is retroactive processing.

The fraction of a payee's salary that is attachable varies according to the salary limits set by the government.

Before you enter garnishments, you should review and update the salary limits used in the garnishment calculations on the Garnishment Bracket page.

To access this page, select Set Up HCM > Product Related > Global Payroll & Absence Mgmt > Garnishments/Court Orders > Bracket FRA.