Grandstand. As is customary, the candidates for the presidential election leave their mark and their differences with their tax proposals. The programs for this spring 2022 are marked by a series of measures, the examination of which calls into question from the angle of their legal feasibility. Here are some examples of constitutional issues.
Marine Le Pen (National Rally) promises to exempt from income tax all young people up to 30 years old. A way, she underlines, to strengthen the attractiveness of the territory and to help newcomers to the labor market to start in life.
If it were seized of the examination of the compliance of this exemption with the constitutional principle of equality before tax or public charges, the Constitutional Council would verify that its objective is rational. This is indeed the case, it seems to us, because it is legitimate to promote the integration of young people into their professional lives. But the Council would not stop there. It would extend its control to the precautions taken by the law to achieve the objective it pursues without going beyond it.
However, as it is presented, the measure would confer on the entire age group an advantage that would benefit most significantly those with the highest incomes, those who are precisely the least exposed to the difficulties of insertion to which the measure intends to counter. At the very least, the amount of exempt income should therefore be capped.
Principle of equality before the tax
In addition, the exemption should be ruled out for young people who already have a certain financial autonomy thanks to their assets or to the supplement of the income of a spouse over the age of 30. We immediately see the practical difficulty that the development of a device taking into account this set of data would entail.
Eric Zemmour (Reconquest!) advocates a drastic reduction in the generalized social contribution (CSG) in favor of low-income workers in the public and private sectors as well as the self-employed, to allow them to receive the equivalent of a 13and month, a measure to be applied on a degressive basis for all salaries ranging from the minimum wage to the median salary. The Jospin government had voted in 2001 a rebate of CSG and contribution for the reimbursement of the social debt (CRDS) in favor of people receiving income from activity below 1.3 times the minimum wage.
The Constitutional Council censured this provision. The principle of equality before the tax requires taking into account all the elements that determine the contributory capacity of a taxpayer. However, in this case, account was not taken, a defect which is found in the candidate’s proposal, neither of the taxpayer’s income other than that derived from an activity, nor of the income of other members of the household.
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