Barthelemy Philippe
While the examination of the 2023 finance bill has just started in the National Assembly, the discussions are already looking tense. At the heart of the debates lie certain tax giveaways, which the government had promised to attack in order to reduce public spending. What about? Europe 1 takes stock.
A first test for the government. The text for the 2023 budget entered into discussion this Monday in the Assembly and has been the source of many disagreements since its creation. More than 3,300 amendments have been tabled, the debates could drag on and push the executive to resort to 49.3. MEPs will look first at the revenue side and then at the expenditure side. The issue of tax loopholes should then come back on the table. They cost nearly 90 billion euros per year. The State is regularly summoned to clean up by the Court of Auditors.
Only six tax loopholes removed out of 471
“We can do more, we can do better”, this is the idea proposed by the government since last year. Bruno Le Maire has recognized it himself, the government is not doing enough to reduce its tax expenditures. The budget for 2023 removes only six tax loopholes out of a total of 471. It must be said that the French are very attached to certain measures, such as that of the tax credit for the employment of an employee at home, a tax gift of nearly five billion euros per year for households. But the maintenance of other tax loopholes is not justified, according to François Ecalle, former magistrate at the Court of Auditors.
Strategies that leave you perplexed
“I think we shouldn’t have, for example, lowered the VAT rate on housing maintenance work or on restoration. It has no interest in terms of redistribution because the rich also benefit from it. generally. It’s expensive and it’s not very effective”, he analyzes. The addition of these two devices costs nearly 8 billion euros per year to the State. In total, the shortfall in tax loopholes represents nearly 90 billion euros per year, or 3.5% of GDP.