Question to an expert
Can I continue to run the business that I am going to pass on?
If you intend to donate shares or shares in your company, for example to your children, you may be able to benefit from an advantageous tax system when calculating transfer duties: the Dutreil pact. It allows, under certain conditions, an exemption of 75% of the value transmitted.
This device was laid down by law, end of 2018. However, with a bad surprise: after these legislative changes, the tax administration introduced a new ban in early 2021. A donor bound by a Dutreil pact could no longer retain management of the company, once he had transferred all his titles.
It had therefore become impossible to benefit from the tax advantage if the donee (the one who receives the securities) could not fulfill the function of management, for example because a minor or in a legal situation of incapacity. Or if the Dutreil pact had been set up in a large family group, with recipients not having the vocation to run the company.
But the latest comments administrative documents on the Dutreil pact, which date from December 2021, finally authorize, “by tolerance”, the donor to keep his management functions – the temporary accompaniment of the transmission often being a condition of its success…