The Constitutional Council on Thursday censored the provisions of the 2024 budget intended to attract international sports federations like Fifa to France, judging that they ignored “the principle of equality” when it comes to taxes.
Carried by Renaissance MP Mathieu Lefvre, the amendment rebutted Thursday by the Sages provided for exempting international sports federations from corporate tax and several contributions (CFE, CVAE) for their sports governance or promotion missions. of the practice of sport, remind the Sages in a press release.
This amendment also provided for an income tax exemption for employees of international sports federations domiciled in France for five years.
If the amendment never mentioned the International Football Federation (Fifa) by name, it is indeed the main body which seemed to be concerned by this system.
But by planning to grant these tax advantages on the sole ground that an international sports federation was recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the legislator did not base its assessment on objective and rational criteria based on the goal that he proposed, say the Sages.
Consequently, the Constitutional Council censures article 31 of the deferred law as violating the principle of equality before public offices, complicating a return of the Fifa headquarters to Paris.
Created in the French capital in 1904, Fifa moved to Zurich in 1932 and has located its main headquarters there since 2007.
In their press release, the Wise Men also considered that the allocation of regulated savings (Livret A, LDDS, etc.) to the financing of the defense industry had no place in a finance law, without however, exclude the adoption of such a measure in another text.
Eleven other legislative amendments – provisions not relating to finance laws – were rejected by the Constitutional Council. Among these is article 208 of the budget concerning the securing of the extraction of waste from the potash mines of Alsace and article 233 relating to the creation of support centers for education.
The censorship of these various provisions does not prejudge the conformity of their content with other constitutional requirements. It is open to the legislator, if he deems it useful, to adopt such measures again by another means than a finance law, conclude the Sages.