In the media and political crush of recent days, this is a measure that has not caused much noise. During the presentation of the Renaissance program for the legislative elections on June 20, Gabriel Attal announced that he wanted to eliminate notary fees for first-time buyers for real estate worth up to 250,000 euros. These taxes, called transfer duties (DMTO), are used to remunerate the notary managing the sale, but also to fill the coffers of local authorities and the State. However, the DMTOs constitute the second financial resource of the departments.
Stéphane Troussel, president of the departmental council of Seine-Saint-Denis, the fifth most populous department in France, believes that this measure would deal a new blow to local finances already in great difficulty and would endanger the capacity of the departments to provide public services efficiently and equitably.
L’Express: Would the partial removal of transfer taxes be bad news for the departments?
Stephane Troussel: Running public services costs money. It is all well and good to want to eliminate notary fees, that is bound to please the taxpayer, but if the Prime Minister does not indicate how to run the public services that are partly funded by these taxes, there is a slight problem of coherence. This will directly jeopardize our ability to provide services efficiently and fairly. Furthermore, the elimination of taxes always favors the most advantaged to the detriment of the poorest. I do not believe that this is the time to increase inequalities.
Yes, there is a serious crisis in the real estate market, but this is not the right method to revive it. The problem today is both the scarcity and the high cost of goods. There are also interest rates which have increased significantly and which, even if they seem to be starting to decline slightly, remain at a still high level. It is this Macronist and totally financial vision which considers housing as a market and nothing but a market, and that a good purge would be enough to bring prices down. They see things through the small end of the lens. The housing crisis is not caused only by notary fees.
What do you think should be done?
When the President of the Republic launched the National Council for the Reconstruction of Housing and entrusted responsibility for it to two very different people – Véronique Bédague, the head of Nexity, and Christophe Robert of the Abbé Pierre Foundation, who are not wild leftists – they agreed to put forward a certain number of proposals. He did not take up any of them. We need to produce housing on a massive scale, and this is also included in the programme of the candidates of the New Popular Front that I am defending.
What message is the government sending with this plan to exempt notary fees?
Today, DMTOs are the last dynamic tax revenue for the departments. On a property worth 250,000 euros, a buyer pays approximately 19,000 euros in notary fees. Of this amount, approximately 14,000 are paid to local authorities. However, at the same time, local authorities’ social spending continues to increase. The Prime Minister would have done better to cut this Gordian knot and propose a solution at a time when there is a drop in tax revenue and an increase in spending. We are standing on our heads. The current system, which requires the State to delegate powers without providing the necessary resources, particularly to the departments, is not suitable.
Today the compensation mechanisms are completely inadequate and this type of proposal will only make the situation worse. In Seine-Saint-Denis, the poorest territory in France, the State compensates the least for social and education expenses than elsewhere. It’s the Republic in reverse. This is linked to a certain number of criteria which disadvantage a department like ours. I could also say that about Aisne or the Pyrénées-Orientales. Even the Woerth report commissioned by the President of the Republic on decentralization, its financing, organization, points to this.
What are you demanding today?
I am calling not only for emergency measures, such as the safeguard fund for departments in difficulty, but above all we must rethink the financing arrangements for local authorities, and particularly for departments. They have social spending which is dynamic and I do not see, in the current context, why this dynamic would be reversed. Successive labor market reforms, pension reform, everything contributes to social spending, particularly the RSA, continuing to increase. I am also thinking of the allowance for the autonomy of the elderly with the aging of the population and in Seine-Saint-Denis, aging is before us.
What would be the consequences of a deeper deterioration of local finances?
The missions of the communities would be restricted exclusively to a role of counter and blind payer of benefits. It is almost a social security fund, with a whole bunch of public services that would be reduced, if not to nothing, to next to nothing. And then above all, public policies would become more and more unequal between territories and citizens. This is totally contrary to our republican motto and the spirit of decentralization.
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