It is an often politically flammable subject. The taxation of high incomes regularly gives rise to political clashes. A note from the specialized site Fipeco, relayed by The echoesmakes a contribution to the question of comparing tax rates on labor and capital income.
According to the conclusions of this note published this Wednesday, October 4which is based on a study by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) presenting the average income tax rates in 2021, France taxes the wealthiest people very heavily, in comparison with around forty OECD countries.
A single French employee without children, who has 64,000 euros gross per month (i.e. 20 times the average income of 3,200 euros gross per month), is thus deducted 64% of his earnings in the form of social security contributions and tax. . France comes in second on the OECD podium. It is only ahead of Belgium, which takes 67% of salaries, while Finland (63%) and Slovenia (63%) complete the podium. All other countries tax less on earned income, from the United Kingdom (52%) to Italy (50%), including Germany (47%) and the United States (44%).
The effective tax rate for a French person receiving again 64,000 euros, but in the form of dividends this time, reaches 51%, including the income tax paid by the company before payment of the dividend. France comes in fourth place, tied with Switzerland and South Korea, for taxing dividends from people earning 20 times the average salary. Only three OECD countries tax them more: Spain (57%), Denmark (55%) and Canada (53%).
“France taxes salaries more than dividends”
To achieve this result, Fipeco, an association which presents information and analyzes on public finances and the economy, looked at the taxes paid both by the individual and by the company which pays them these income. In the case of a salary, this includes income tax and employee contributions, but also employer contributions. For income received in the form of dividends, the calculation includes taxes on coupons received as well as the upstream tax paid by the company on these same profits, before their distribution, as detailed The echoes.
“It is true that France taxes salaries more than dividends,” notes Echoes François Ecalle. A single person earning 64,000 euros gross would therefore have an interest in receiving dividends rather than a salary. Internationally, France is not an exception in terms of higher taxation of salaries than dividends. In fact, 26 OECD countries offer more advantageous taxation of capital income. Several States, however, have chosen to do the opposite: the United States, Germany and Spain tax dividends more heavily than salaries.
With a gap of 13 points between the tax rates on salaries and dividends for these people, France is in twelfth place in the OECD. The largest gaps (21 or 22 points) are found in the east of Europe, notes Fipeco: in Slovenia, Hungary, Estonia and Latvia. The gaps are 19 points in Belgium and 18 points in Sweden.
Very low-tax billionaires?
The OECD figures also put into perspective the observation on the degression of taxation for the richest drawn up in a study carried out in collaboration with the tax authorities by the Institute of Public Policies (IPP), an academic research center attached to the Paris School of Economics, and unveiled in June 2023. Certainly, the four authors of this study explained that tax progressivity works perfectly for 99.9% of taxpayers. For example, according to this study, a person with around 600,000 euros of annual economic income sees 46% of this amount returned to the tax authorities.
But, according to this study, the overall tax rate, supposed to be progressive, decreases among the 37,800 richest households. For the 75 households located at the very top of the scale, the billionaires, or 0.0002% of the French population, it even falls to 26%, as detailed by L’Express last June.
The reason ? As they climb into the upper echelons of wealth, “tax households receive more and more income through the profits of the companies they own, without deciding to distribute all these profits to themselves”, noted economists in this study. “Most shareholders do not control the distribution of the company’s profits,” says his side. Echoes François Ecalle, for whom the OECD approach is “more relevant”.