What’s the annoying part about working for yourself or working remotely? Doing taxes, paying yourself, and all those extra things you need to do. But the moment you understand them, you’ll open new doors for yourself. And that’s what I’m helping you with today.

In a past post, I gave you the numbers you need to know and what to expect. But I got a lot of questions about real examples, with real numbers. That’s why I’ll show you three scenarios with real numbers for CNSS (national security fund) and IR (taxes). Let’s start:

First scenario: 5,000 MAD

Let’s suppose your base salary is 5,000 MAD. What we call in French, salaire brut.

CNSS

The first step is to know your CNSS. And looking back at our previous post, the rates are:

• What you’ll pay: 6.74% (337 MAD)
• What your employer will pay: 21.09% (1,054.5 MAD)

If you’re self-employed or working remotely, you’ll pay both as you’re the employee and employer at the same time (1,391.5 MAD).

Professional expenses

I’m not sure if this is the correct English translation, but it looks like it is. In French it’s frais professionnelles.

These are professional expenses you can remove from your salary before paying taxes. It’s 20% of the salary with a maximum of 2,500 MAD.

In our example, 20% of 5,000 MAD is 1,000 MAD.

Revenue taxes (IR)

Now, you can finally calculate your revenue taxes, or what we call Impots sur le revenue (IR).

IR isn’t calculated from the whole salary, so we should take out what we calculated so far.

5,000 MAD – 337 MAD (CNSS) – 1,000 MAD (Professional expenses) = 3,663 MAD.

Salary	IR Rate	Deduction
0 – 2,500 MAD	0%	–
2,501 – 4,166 MAD	10%	250 MAD
4,167 – 5,000 MAD	20%	666.67 MAD
5,001 – 6.666 MAD	30%	1,166.67 MAD
6,667 – 15,000 MAD	34%	1,433.33 MAD
15,001 MAD and up	38%	2,033.33 MAD

Now if you see the IR table, we are in the 10% quadrant. But be aware, that from 0 – 2500 MAD, you don’t pay any IR. So that 10% is only applicable for 3,663 MAD – 2,500 MAD = 1,163 MAD.

Which gives us an IR of 1,163 MAD x 10% = 116.3 MAD ⇒ 117 MAD (always rounded up).

The difference we calculated above is easy in this example, but once your salary starts to get bigger, it’s harder to do it every time. Luckily, given these calculations are common, there is a better way of doing it. And this is why there is another column called deduction in that table.

You can directly calculate the IR on the whole amount and then deduce what’s on the last column. In our example, this gives us: 3,663 MAD x 10% = 366,3 MAD, then deducting 250 MAD gives us 116,3 MAD, which is the same result as before.

Your final salary:

So if your salary is 5,000 MAD, what you’ll get after taking all taxes is:

5,000 MAD – 337 MAD (CNSS) – 117 MAD (IR) = 4,546 MAD

And as a final note, if you are self-employed or working remotely, you’ll pay an extra 1,054.5 MAD. This will not be taken from your salary but from your company’s money.

Second scenario: 10,000 MAD

Calculating CNSS

This time, it’s a little different than before. When calculating your CNSS, some of your taxes are only applicable up to 6,000 MAD:

What you’ll pay:

• 2,26% (on 10,000 MAD)
• 3,96% (on 6,000 MAD)
• 0,52% (on 6,000 MAD)

This gives us a total of: 494.8 ⇒ 495 MAD

What your employer will pay:

• 6,40% (on 10,000 MAD)
• 1,05% (on 6,000 MAD)
• 7,93% (on 6,000 MAD)
• 4,11% (on 10,000 MAD)
• 1,6 % (on 10,000 MAD)

This gives us a total of: 1,749.8 ⇒ 1,750 MAD

Same as before, if you’re self-employed or working remotely, you’ll pay both: 2,245 MAD.

Professional expenses

Same as before, 20% of 10,000 MAD is 2,000 MAD.

Revenue taxes (IR)

The salary we are going to apply the IR on is:

10,000 MAD – 495 MAD (CNSS) – 2,000 MAD (Professional expenses) = 7,505 MAD

If you see the IR table, we are in the 34% quadrant. This time we’ll use the last column to speed up calculations. In our case:

7,505 MAD x 34% – 1,433 MAD = 1,118 MAD

Your final salary:

In the end, your salary will be 10,000 MAD – 495 MAD (CNSS) – 1,118 MAD (IR) = 8,387 MAD.

Third scenario: 20,000 MAD

Calculating CNSS

What you’ll pay:

• 2,26% (on 20,000 MAD)
• 3,96% (on 6,000 MAD)
• 0,52% (on 6,000 MAD)

This gives us a total of: 720.8 ⇒ 721 MAD

What your employer will pay:

• 6,40% (on 20,000 MAD)
• 1,05% (on 6,000 MAD)
• 7,93% (on 6,000 MAD)
• 4,11% (on 20,000 MAD)
• 1,6 % (on 20,000 MAD)

This gives us a total of: 2,960.8 ⇒ 2,961 MAD

Professional expenses

This time, 20% of 20,000 MAD is 4,000 MAD, which is above the max. We’ll only take the maximum, which is 2,500 MAD.

Revenue taxes (IR)

The salary we are going to apply the IR on is:

20,000 MAD – 721 MAD (CNSS) – 2,500 MAD (Professional expenses) = 16,779 MAD

If you see the IR table, we are in the 38% quadrant. Which gives us:

16,779 MAD x 38% – 2,033.3 MAD = 4,343 MAD

Your final salary:

In the end, your salary is 20,000 MAD – 721 MAD (CNSS) – 4,343 MAD (IR) = 14,936 MAD.

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Conclusion

I tried to give you examples from all the spectrum of IR to give you a better idea of what to expect. I hope this was helpful to you. I highly encourage you to take your paycheck and double-check if the numbers are correct as an exercise 🙂

Worth noting that these are simple calculations and not taking into account any fiscal optimizations you can do. If these optimizations are something you want, we offer consulting services on this. Contact us and let’s talk!

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