The equivalent of twice the justice budget: almost 20 billion euros in fraud were detected by the administration in 2024, an amount that the Minister of Public Accounts wishes to double by 2029 in a very tense context for French public finances.
“We tracked the fraud better,” explained Amélie de Montchalin in an interview with the newspaper Releasebefore a stage point this Friday, March 14 in Bercy on the government’s fight against fraud launched in 2023.
The different types of fraud, fiscal, social, customs and public aid, “it is as many policies that are not funded as they should,” said the minister, adding that fighting this phenomenon constituted “a strong lever to delete the country, reduce the deficit without increasing the taxes on the middle and popular classes and without making arbitrary cuts”.
Nearly 17 billion euros in tax fraud
Of the 20 billion fraud detected last year, 13 billion could be recovered, said Amélie de Montchalin. The only tax fraud detected amounts to 16.7 billion euros, of which 11.4 billion returned to state funds. “We have doubled tax fraud detected since 2020 and that on social fraud since 2019,” said the minister. The criminal assets seized in 2024 were multiplied by four compared to the previous year, at 600 million.
Difficult to quantify, the amount of tax fraud in France is not subject to any official estimate. Part emerged from the iceberg, the amounts put in overlap had reached 15.2 billion euros in 2023, after 14.6 billion in 2022.
The minister spoke of a change in model of fraud, spent “in a few years of individual fraudsters to a real fraud industry, with an offensive of crime organized on our public policies”. Thus, almost 250 million euros in fraud were able to be avoided last year for the Maprimerenov ‘system, thanks to the detection of false companies and declarations of work.
A bill to suspend the payment of public aid in the event of suspicion
The objective, according to the minister, is to be able to detect 40 billion euros in fraud by 2029. It counts on a measure reinforcing control of income tax and on a bill which will be examined on April 2 in the Senate, aimed at suspending the payment of public aid in the event of suspicion of fraud.
She also says she wants to punish as a criminal act the scam with public finances in an organized gang and set up “a unique basis of fraudulent RIB” to thwart identity theft. Regarding VAT fraud, she recalled the launch of the electronic invoicing of companies in 2026.
Recovering the fraud money constitutes a crucial issue for the government, which wishes to reduce the France’s public deficit to 5.4 % of GDP in 2025, against around 6 % in 2024. In 2023, the government had announced a 25 % increase in the tax controls of “largest heritage” by 2027 and, concerning social fraud, the doubling of the number of rectifies. Of the 1,500 additional agents planned to combat tax fraud, 780 will have been recruited by the end of 2025, according to Amélie de Montchalin.
The Minister of Labor, Catherine Vautrin, had indicated on March 6 that the detection by the URSSAF of social contributions fraud increased by 33 % in 2024, to 1.6 billion euros. She had assured that a new recovery objective would be set, higher than that of 5.5 billion euros by 2027 arrested last year. The sums actually recovered, however, are less than 10 % of the fraud detected, a rate that his colleague public accounts wishes to improve. Frauds to social benefits detected by the National Family Allowance Fund increased by 20 %, to 450 million.