The right-wing majority Senate tried on Wednesday, as part of the examination of the draft budget for 2023, to provide a response to the tension in the housing market in tourist areas, without convincing the government.
The debate on this sensitive subject took place while many mayors are received this week at the Senate, as part of their Congress.
“This subject is only the result of a reform (abolition of the housing tax on the main residence, editor’s note) unfinanced, bcle, and that the communities must today, as they can deal with it”, has said the general rapporteur for the budget Jean-Franois Husson (LR) straight away.
“The French may have made savings” with this deletion, “but the French can no longer find accommodation”, added the centrist Annick Billon.
For the ecologist Ronan Dantec, “that we can no longer live at home in our territory (…) is causing a deep rupture in the country”.
The government has introduced into the finance bill considered adopted at first reading by the National Assembly an article allowing the extension of “zoning”, where municipalities are authorized to increase the housing tax of secondary residences by 60%. .
The objective is to provide additional leverage to municipalities where local populations are struggling to find housing all year round, while housing exists but is rarely occupied.
The Minister in charge of Public Accounts Gabriel Attal indicated that “according to figures from Bercy, 80% of the municipalities” which are entitled to this increase do not use this possibility”.
Proposals were made in the Chamber to go further by making it possible to “decorrelate” the rates of housing tax on secondary residences (THRS) and property taxes, so that the increase in the former does not penalize not mechanically permanent habitat. But senators have warned against a risk of “bludgeoning” second homes.
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“This rule of link, certainly constraining, makes it possible to avoid that a community makes weigh the load of the tax on a particular category of taxpayers”, underlined Mr. Husson.
“What we are asking is to allow communities to decide what is good for them in tax matters,” pleaded the boss of the PS senators, Patrick Kanner.
After long debates, the Senate finally voted, against the advice of the government, on a “compromise” amendment proposed by Philippe Bas (LR) to give the communities a margin of maneuver, but limited.
According to this amendment, “it would be possible to increase the tax on secondary residences within the limit of 25% without increasing the tax on built land”, explained Mr. Bas.