‪L’artisan, son comptable et sa retraite‪. Étude d’un profil d’indépendants établis

?Little-known, though engaged from the early 1970s, part of French retirement reforms have concerned the alignment of the social security of self-employed workers with the ?general? one of employees. Nowadays, self-employed people contribute to the Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) system under the same regulatory conditions as private sector employees. Such an alignment is supposed to guarantee them better legal pensions. How has this longstanding institutional change impacted the retirement planning of self-employed, knowing that they commonly stand on their professional and private assets for their standard of living in their elderly years ? By running a qualitative inquiry among building craftsmen aged 50 and over, we show that two mechanisms are likely to continue to reduce the objective and subjective significance of pension rights. First, the so-called Pay-As-You-Go system still actually requires independent workers to set aside provisions to cover the amount of their pension contribution. Under a complex tax and benefit system, this payment requests the assistance of accountants, whose fancy calculations tend to optimize social contribution costs depending on whether or not they are worth their price. Secondly, in a national context of doubts towards the welfare state and its future, independent workers such as building craftsmen remain eager to add a net value to their property assets, with or without the blessing of their accountants.?