Taxes, inheritance… This law which will repair a predominantly female injustice

The bill aimed at ensuring property justice within the family was adopted in the Senate on March 20, after being voted on by the Assembly. The government is in favor of this and has activated the accelerated procedure. What will this text change, which is likely to be promulgated in spring 2024? Response(s) from Modem deputy Hubert Ott, author of this bill.

Hubert Ott, if you tabled this bill at the beginning of December 2023, is it to offer a solution to the inextricable legal cases?

Hubert Ott: Not just court cases! It is about providing a solution if, initially, injustices arise in matrimonial law. The text focuses on several types of injustices. This text first covers a section on domestic violence. When there is possible succession, before the right of inheritance is exercised for children, for example, the judge first looks at what the legislator has provided for matrimonial law. However, married people who try to plan for their old age sometimes form a universal community at the end of their lives, so that potential heirs cannot claim anything that affects the couple’s survivor. The community provides that the last living person benefits from a matrimonial advantage so that it cannot be intended for the heirs, most often the children. Everything generally goes well because the usufruct remains with the last living person. But if the last one alive is a murderer who killed his wife, it works the same way… With this future law [en cas d’issue favorable au Parlement, NDLR], if the death is due to the bad act of the survivor, the conviction of the person responsible for brutality leading to the death, or not, of the deceased person will no longer be able to benefit from the advantage. However, 8 times out of 10, it is the woman who is murdered by her husband in such circumstances…

Tax fraud is mainly committed by men and women who are victims of tax prosecutions… it can be colossal!

This bill also includes a section on joint and several liability in tax matters…

HO.: This component of joint responsibility in tax matters was added following the debate on the 2024 budget. The Modem group had proposed this measure in the finance bill for 2024 and Bercy had not retained it to avoid breaking up the fiscal solidarity of the lice, which is not painless from a budgetary point of view. It must therefore be well supervised. The idea is to repair an injustice that is predominantly female. Here again, statistically, tax fraud is mainly carried out by men and women who are victims of tax prosecutions… it can be colossal! The aim was not to call into question the very principle of fiscal solidarity. In marriage, we are fiscally united: if one does something stupid, the other must pay too… The State gives advantages as a married couple but also responsibilities…

This will remain at the discretion of the courts or the tax administration: it will be possible but not automatic!

So your text, as it has been reworked, does not call into question the principle of fiscal solidarity?

HO.: This text provides for exceptions to this principle without calling it into question. If the woman gathers elements, proving that she was not aware – for example of gambling debts or tax cheating in her husband’s business -, or that she did not benefit from what did her husband, then she will be able to constitute a third party and be released from her duties linked to the obligations of marriage. This will remain at the discretion of the courts or the tax administration: it will be possible but not automatic! This is what Bercy wanted.

A consensus has visibly emerged on this text in Parliament…

HO.: We worked on this text with Bercy. The government has also initiated the accelerated procedure. We can reasonably hope for promulgation as early as April.

Following the Senate vote, will it be finalized in a few weeks?

HO.: It will go to the joint committee (CMP), before promulgation which we can expect soon. Yes, I am hopeful! We have the characteristic case of a text which will focus on two aspects of the family, and which had no acceptable response until now. In the first case, this will avoid double punishment with a faulty father who also benefits from the advantages of the family in place of the heirs. In the second, this opens the door to resolving the suffering of women who find themselves pursued by the tax administration for the faults of their ex-spouse: the possibility of becoming a third party will now be recognized by law.