We only remember too well, the parliamentary debates of preparing the 2025 budget of France had given rise to a slew of proposals aiming, for the most part, to increase the existing taxes or to create new ones. Curious inspiration in a country which already displays the heaviest rate of compulsory European samples. The search for reduction of expenses to hand over public finances to the square aroused less vocations. Finally, in the hope of reducing the deficit to 5.4 % this year, after 6 % in 2024, the finance law passed is based on 30 billion euros in savings (relative, because evaluated with regard to the supposed “trend” of expenses) and a fiscal increase of 20 billion euros. With a particular effort requested from large companies and large fortunes, through devices presented as provisional. Regarding households, the differential contribution on high incomes (CDHR) must ensure that the tax households concerned are responsible for an effective income tax rate of at least 20 %.
Some elected officials want to go further. Based on the work of the economist Gabriel Zucman, the environmental deputies made a new taxation voted for the “ultra -ties” voted last month. It provides that 0.01 % of the wealthiest taxpayers are subject, beyond a threshold of 100 million euros, to a floor tax of 2 % of their assets. Expected recipe: around 20 billion. With a Senate that leans to the right, the legislative path of this proposal should quickly turn short. But the executive has taken up the principle on his own and studies a reduced version – a rate four times less of 0.5 %, on a basis that excludes professional goods, unlike the “Zucman tax”.
Pun the wealthy to fill the deficit: at first glance, the approach seems all the more legitimate since this taxpayer’s fringe is deemed to have benefited, under the chairmanship of Emmanuel Macron, from an accommodating tax policy. To overcome the a priori, the economist Gilles Koleda and the IFRAP Foundation team immersed themselves in the details of the evolution of the taxation of households, with a 360 -degree vision. A study that the Express has been able to consult exclusively, and whose results, far from the cliché of the “billionaire-who-ne-paie-pa, surprise. These experts have chosen to embrace the whole spectrum: income tax, CSG, CRDS, levies on income from movable capital, property tax, housing tax, property wealth tax (IFI), donation and succession rights. Reported to gross disposable income from all French households, the sum of these direct taxes saw its weight fall back in 2023 to 17.7 % against 18.1 % in 2017, the year of the first election of Emmanuel Macron.
But is the instigator of the En Marche movement really the “president of the rich” that we believe? To judge, Ifrap has cut our population into decile. And reveals that, for the 10 % that earn the most, the share of all direct taxes increased from 37.5 % of the income available in 2017 to… 42.1 % in 2022 (INSEE data is not yet available for 2023). “Our 2019 study, already, had shown that the transformation of the ISF into IFI had certainly led to a reduction in taxes of 1.4 billion for the latter decile, but that in parallel, the abolition of unemployment and illness wage contributions, tilted in the form of CSG, and the PFU’s action share had contributed to an increase of 8.6 billion of social security contributions for this category,” said Agnès Verdier-Molinié, The director of the liberal think tank. And the trend was confirmed in the following years. “The statement put forward in the hemicycle and outside that the richest has been enormously advantaged since 2017 is false. When we look at the figures, it is even the opposite. Despite this reality, for lack of having taken into account all the parameters, we always rehash in Parliament and elsewhere the proposal to tax more the same households which already pay more than 50% of the note. French.”
It is also for economic activity. Behind, it is the tricolor attractiveness that is threatened. “Instead of embarking on picrocholin discussions to find out if the richest 0.01 % pay more or less taxes than 0.1 %, it would be better to make international comparisons that would show that we are among the most taxed on the high incomes which are mainly entrepreneurs. The CDHR has already done a lot of trouble because it encourages talents to leave France. 2026, this project of new contribution of 0.5 %is now preparing, even more incentive at the start. Economist Antoine Levy, professor in Berkeley, goes even further: “We often talk about tax emigration, which is a reality, but it would probably not be massive enough to completely cancel tax revenue [de la taxe sur les ultrariches]. On the other hand, there are other more insidious and more difficult effects to measure, such as discouragement in business creation. “
In summary, France plays against its camp rather than engaging in a real questioning. “We make our fellow citizens believe that a handful of entrepreneurs and large French companies can pay the additional cost of our social model and plug the deficit hole, it is false,” said the director of Ifrap. “Even if we fully confiscated heritage [des plus grandes fortunes]estimated at 1,000 billion euros, this would only cover less than a year of public spending. And after? “Asks Antoine Levy, who militates for a tightening of screws in matters of social protection, transfers to local authorities and state expenditure.
If the government is short of inspiration, Agnès Verdier-Molinié is always ready to share the fruit of its reflections. In his latest work, Facing the wall, She details her battle plan, estimated estimates of supporting potential savings. The main lines? Tackling the administrative mille-feuille, improving the efficiency of local authorities, reforming the pension system, modernizing that of health, establishing a single social allowance … enough to cut 110 billion euros, effort necessary to achieve a primary balance-that is to say outside the debt-public finances in 2029. Measures that require more political courage than to draw in the heritage of billionaires.
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