It was abolished in 2023 by Emmanuel Macron, and now elected officials are demanding its return: while the National Assembly is currently studying budgetary savings options for the year 2025, parliamentarians and local elected officials have proposed to Michel Barnier to reinstate the housing tax.
Resurrect this local tax which all the inhabitants of a municipality previously paid could make it possible, under certain conditions, to generate in tax revenue the savings that the Prime Minister is asking from French cities and communities, i.e. more than five billion euros. The proposal brings together personalities from all political stripes, even if not all want to see the exact initial version of the housing tax return.
On the left, some elected officials have called for a revised housing tax, in order to introduce more tax justice. For LFI MP David Guiraud, the measure would only be relevant if it targets 20% of the richest taxpayers. “We estimate that in this period of crisis they can afford it,” said on FranceInfo the parliamentarian, whose amendment tabled in the National Assembly provides that the measure would replenish the coffers to the tune of 8 billion euros.
For the president of the Finance Committee and rebellious MP Eric Coquerel, the abolition of the housing tax by Emmanuel Macron signed “the end of the fiscal autonomy” of the municipalities, he explained this Thursday on BFMTV, before declaring himself in favor of his recovery.
“If we have to recreate a tax, this is it”
On the LR side, it was the mayor of Meaux and former minister, Jean-François Copé, who was the first to propose reinstating the housing tax. “Cities are crumbling under compulsory spending, he recently judged in his column in L’Express, denouncing the injunction made to French municipalities to cut their budgets by five billion euros. Cities which, when they are well managed, pay for others and will have to give up investments that bring growth to finance the negligence of the State.” “If we must recreate a tax, it is this one -there,” he continued in mid-October on LCI. For the elected official, this removal gave rise to a “crazy paradox”, with well-off tenants who “no longer pay anything” and modest owners who would be forced to pay property tax.
In his political camp, he is not the only one to plead for the return of this local tax: “It was a tax which created a link between the resident and the municipality”, explained LR MP Véronique Louwagie, before specifying: “On the other hand, it is a file which cannot be opened lightly with an amendment that would come out like that on a budgetary text”. The mayor of Cannes David Lisnard, also in favor of this proposal, expressed Public Senate the idea of a “universal residential tax”, which would still exclude the most precarious.
Financial room for maneuver
Some local elected officials have also asked for the return of the housing tax, to regain some leeway in their finances. The mayor of Manosque Nicolas Isnard therefore proposed the establishment of a “rental tax” reserved for tenants whose income exceeds a minimum amount. The mayor of Mareau-aux-Prés (Loiret) Bertrand Hauchecorne, interviewed by France Bleufor his part put forward a similar hypothesis and mentioned the establishment of a “new local municipal tax based on income”.
Only the government of Michel Barnier seems reluctant to reverse the tax policy desired by Emmanuel Macron and reinstate a tax whose abolition was decided at the start of his first mandate. Their main argument? The abolition of the housing tax would have constituted a “gain in purchasing power” for the French, says the Minister of the Budget Laurent Saint-Martin, on which it is unthinkable to return. A refusal supported by parliamentarians Together for the Republic (EPR). Among them, MP Jean-René Cazeneuve considered that the housing tax was “an extremely unfair tax which weighed on all French people without taking into account their income”. Could the scolding of parliamentarians and local elected officials change the mind of the Macronist camp?