“Adjustments” rather than a “tax revolution”: in a report published on Wednesday, two senators suggest retouching the government’s policy to fight against tax evasion, deemed “robust” for the most part.
Since 2018 and the adoption of a law relating to the fight against tax evasion, revenue from tax audits has been on a upward trend, congratulate Claude Raynal (socialist, environmentalist and republican group) and Jean-Franois Husson (Les Républicains).
The State recovered 10.6 billion euros in 2021, against 7.7 billion three years earlier.
But this 38% increase in three years is not enough to prove the effectiveness of the national policy to fight against tax evasion, qualify Claude Raynal and Jean-Franois Husson, respectively chairman and general rapporteur of the Finance Committee.
Unlike other countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States or Australia, France does not publish any estimated figure of the amount of tax evasion. It is therefore impossible to compare the sums recovered by the administration with those which it still misses.
The two senators plead in particular to strengthen the fight against VAT fraud, at national and European level.
The amounts of VAT recovered by the State in recent years are around one billion euros, relatively modest results compared to estimates of VAT fraud which, according to an estimate made by INSEE, would be between 25 and 30 billion. euros per year.
Among the adjustments they propose, the authors of the report invite the National Institute of Statistics and the administration to produce estimates of the extent of tax evasion by the next finance bill, normally expected in September. 2023.
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The senators also plead to double the number of judicial tax officers within five years, a tax police force currently consists of around forty agents.
In a context of saturation of justice, Claude Raynal and Jean-Franois Husson finally call for support for the deployment of judicial conventions in the public interest (CJIP), which have resulted in recent years in the payment of substantial fines by Google or McDonald’s.
This procedure, which makes it possible to settle a dispute by means of a transaction, has brought in 2.3 billion in fines and tax penalties to the State since 2019.