Editorial of the “World”. The subject of inheritance rights has become a major topic of debate during the presidential campaign. But faced with public opinion which remains very conservative on this subject, most of the candidates have not been inclined to show much audacity. Legacy touches the intimate and sends us back to our own finitude, which makes it an inflammable political object.
Electorally, it probably pays to flatter this individual-oriented approach by promising to reduce taxation. Collective issues, which relate to solidarity, equal opportunities and social mobility, should not, however, be overlooked, as they are essential to the cohesion of society. It is on these that applicants should focus.
The debate on inheritance has an original characteristic: everyone feels concerned, while only a minority of French people will have to pay rights. Four out of five estates are less than the abatement of 100,000 euros currently in force, and are therefore exempt. However, the vast majority of French people are hostile to any increase in taxation.
In the minority that is taxed, the richest have a range of exemptions that allow them to considerably reduce the amount of duties to be paid. This system results in distorting the progressivity of the tax scale. The effective rate paid by the richest 0.1% of French people on the heritage they bequeath is only 10% on average, much less than the theoretical 45% which serves as an argument for those who push to a reduction in taxation.
Marine Le Pen, Valérie Pécresse, Eric Zemmour and Emmanuel Macron advocate new reductions. The outgoing president thus proposes to raise the abatement threshold in the direct line to 150,000 euros and to 100,000 euros in the indirect line. On this last point, the promise has the merit of trying to adapt to changes in society by taking better account of the situation of stepfamilies. But, overall, his proposal, like those of his competitors on the right and on the far right, only perpetuates a system which only benefits a tiny wealthy minority, without overhauling a logic of transmission which does not is not without side effects.
As a recent memo from the Economic Analysis Council, France has become a society of heirs, in which the share of inheritances in the overall heritage has doubled in half a century, to reach 60% of the total. This concentration undermines equality of opportunity, which is one of the cornerstones of our democratic societies. To reverse the trend, it would not necessarily be a question of taxing more globally, as certain candidates on the left propose, but of taxing more equitably, by establishing for example a truly progressive scale, rid of the numerous exemptions in force.
For five years, Emmanuel Macron has been hammering the need to fight against inequalities at birth. The reform of inheritance rights would offer an excellent opportunity to tackle this, as recommended by the OECD and the Blanchard-Tirole report on the “major economic challenges” submitted to the President of the Republic in 2021. Rather than being inspired of these proposals, the outgoing president is giving in to the easy way by preferring to align himself with the traditional positions of the right. The debate deserved more courage.