Ihe government has just announced an anti-tax fraud plan. It displays great ambitions but, alas, without the means to match. However, the stakes are high, because at a time when he intends, for accounting reasons, to push back the retirement age by two years, it is necessary, more than ever, to denounce the extent of “the ( very) great tax evasion.
Between 80 and 100 billion euros every year escape the budget of the State and local authorities due to tax evasion and fraud. If we add the amount of fraud to social security contributions, the overall shortfall far exceeds 100 billion euros.
This is a long way ahead of the fraud in social benefits – from 1 to 3 billion euros – so often denounced by the destroyers of our social model, always quick to blame the unemployed and recipients of social minima and at the same time relativize the extent tax evasion [ces chiffres sont issus du rapport de Solidaires finances publiques, intitulé « La fraude fiscale nuit gravement », publié en novembre 2019].
Tax avoidance is colossal and it increases every year. For more than fifteen years, many high-profile cases have revealed the not marginal and negligible, but systemic and considerable character of tax avoidance in France and abroad. These “affairs” have brought to light the existence of an entire tax evasion industry that lives and thrives for the greater benefit of multinationals as well as our wealthiest fellow citizens. This industry – made up of large audit firms, tax lawyers, banks, wealth managers – is developing thanks to political laissez-faire, even with its complicity.
The endless regime of austerity policies
At a time when all public services are experiencing an unprecedented crisis, it is necessary to point out the damage caused by tax evasion; denounce its disastrous economic, political and democratic costs for our societies.
Its economic cost first: the considerable masses of money relocated to tax havens even distort the relevance of economic indicators. Tax optimization, which is essentially just legalized tax evasion, distorts the economic game and offers a considerable competitive advantage to multinationals over small local businesses.
Its political cost, then: there can be no public policy in any field whatsoever (economy, social, ecology, education, health, culture, etc.) without budgetary leeway. However, tax evasion deprives public action of these margins and condemns us to the endless regime of austerity policies.
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