The public authorities have been looking for money since the summer in all corners to reduce the delirious level of our deficit. This quest has become even more unrestrained in recent weeks since parliamentarians have pretended to discover that the United States has not protected us anymore and that we had to find an additional tens of billions of billions to have a defense budget worthy of the threats to our country. Let’s move on that all of this had been written for years. Apparently, in politics, you have to be on the edge of the abyss to see almost clearly. The current context, alas, implies acting with a precipitation which is rarely good advisor.
Amounts to be put into perspective
As every time our political leaders are biting to bail out the state funds, the fiscal temptation between the big door. However, our compulsory levies are almost the highest in the world; Whatever some say, French billionaires do not have a hidden tax treasure that could solve all our problems; Finally, the 2025 budget further increases the charge of taxes, on companies in particular, failing to have reduced public expenditure, while it is however, at the international level, one of the most substantial reported to GDP.
Faced with such dead ends, some elected officials and officials from Bercy think they have found an expedient: slash in business aid. It is true that the amounts mentioned can make you dizzy. By making the sum of the tax niches, the reduction in loads, the VAT with reduced rate, tax credits and subsidies, we arrive at amounts between 150 and 200 billion euros, depending on the perimeters retained. It’s gigantic. But these figures are to be put into perspective.
François Ecalle, undoubtedly the best specialist in the subject, underlines that certain aid for companies are actually household aid. For example, exemption from employer contributions or reduced VAT rates also benefit individuals even if, legally, it is the companies that benefit from it. To rigorously quantify support for economic activity, the president of Fipeco calculates the compulsory levies acquitted by net companies of tax niches, subsidies and other innovation aids. This “rate of net compulsory levies” reached, in 2023, 295 billion euros, or 10.5 % of GDP, which places our country in the third European rank, behind Sweden, almost equally with the Netherlands, and far ahead of Germany, where this figure is 7 % of GDP.
Complexity and frustration
Thus, if aid to companies have – very slightly – increased in forty years, the public charge which weighs on the latter, due to various samples, remains a major competitive handicap. This burden is paid in investments, jobs and wages. On this subject, France is therefore faced with a terribly vicious circle. Our country is struggling with compulsory levies on companies which it is unable to lower significantly and sustainable and, in a saving reflex, in front of the wall of reality, to preserve investment and employment, it multiplies tax exemptions and subsidies.
This Gribouille policy has a cost because it generates complexity and frustration: complexity that makes happiness, and fortune, of accountants; Frustration, because these aids and subsidies are so numerous that the public authorities find it difficult to assess them and constantly ask for increased controls, which exasperates business leaders and maintains unhealthy paranoia.
A more reasoned approach would consist in implementing a lasting strategy of decreasing compulsory levies of companies coupled with a decrease in aid. Regarding SMEs, it would be clever to reduce subsidies and assign the amounts thus saved in public controls, for example to implement a large renovation plan for our heritage. These are only common sense proposals. We do exactly the opposite.
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