Background
Following an audit covering 2013 and 2014, URSSAF Nord-Pas-de-Calais sent Société [1] a letter of observations on January 11, 2016, identifying several proposed contribution adjustments. URSSAF then issued a formal demand for payment on April 13, 2016.
The company challenged only adjustment items 4 and 6 before URSSAF’s internal appeals commission. After URSSAF served an enforcement order on November 26, 2019, the company opposed that order in the social-security court and also sought to contest items 1, 2, 3, and 5. The Amiens Court of Appeal held that the company’s challenge to those additional items was inadmissible. After the company entered judicial liquidation, its liquidator continued the cassation proceedings.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Cassation dismissed the appeal. It held that when a contributor responds to a post-audit formal demand by applying to the collection agency’s internal appeals commission, the contributor may not later use an opposition to the resulting enforcement order to challenge adjustment items that were not identified in the administrative claim.
Because the company’s referral to URSSAF’s internal appeals commission was limited to items 4 and 6, the Court ruled that the Amiens Court of Appeal correctly found its later challenges to items 1, 2, 3, and 5 inadmissible. The Court rejected the company’s three other grounds without a specially reasoned decision because they were manifestly incapable of supporting reversal, ordered the company through its liquidator to pay costs, and denied the parties’ requests for litigation expenses.
Key Takeaways
- A contributor challenging an URSSAF formal demand must identify before the internal appeals commission every adjustment item it intends to contest judicially.
- An opposition to an enforcement order cannot be used to add challenges to adjustment items omitted from the earlier administrative claim.
- The Court affirmed the judgment below and left the unpreserved challenges procedurally inadmissible.
Why It Matters
The decision makes the scope of the initial administrative claim decisive in later social-security contribution litigation. A contributor who challenges only selected adjustment items before URSSAF’s internal appeals commission risks forfeiting judicial review of the remaining items, even when later opposing an enforcement order based on the same formal demand.
Practitioners should therefore review every component of an URSSAF reassessment at the administrative-appeal stage and expressly include all disputed items within the applicable filing period.