A decree authorizing nearly 2,600 additional municipalities, mainly tourist ones, to increase their housing tax on second homes by up to 60% to combat the housing crisis has been published, we learned on Tuesday from the Association of Mayors of France (AMF).
This decree is a response adapted to the territories known as strainedwhere the presence of secondary residences is a brake on the mobilization of year-round housing, Thierry Repentin, mayor of Chambry and chairman of the AMF Housing Commission, told AFP.
Expected in the spring but postponed due to undesirable effects on the finances of certain municipalities, this decree published on August 26 aims to put vacant housing or secondary residences back on the permanent housing market.
In concrete terms, it extends the scope of the annual tax on vacant housing (TLV, editor’s note), a zoning that makes it possible to increase the housing tax on furnished housing not allocated to the main dwelling, in other words residences secondary, to municipalities which, without belonging to a zone of continuous urbanization of more than 50,000 inhabitants, are confronted with a marked imbalance between supply and demand for housing.
3700 municipalities now concerned
With this decree, a total of 3,700 municipalities are now part of this new zoning, mainly located on the coastal facades, in Corsica and in mountain areas.
They have until October 1 to deliberate so that this increase can apply from January 1, 2024.
Previously, only municipalities belonging to an area of continuous urbanization of more than 50,000 inhabitants, where a marked imbalance between supply and demand for housing leads to serious difficulties in access to housing, were eligible.
But the text also automatically deprives of revenue the municipalities that had introduced a housing tax on vacant housing (THLV). In fact, the communes cannot cumulate THLV and TLV, the TLV so perceived by the State, the THLV by the communes. This loss is valued at more than 24 million euros.
This decree should be improved to allow mayors to use independently of each other the housing tax on secondary residences and that on vacant housing, because we have territories where there are both a lot of housing vacancies and a lot of second homes, reacted Thierry Repentin, indicating however that the government was committed to integrating this loss into the future 2024 finance law.
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