According to the Court of Auditors, certain tax loopholes are ineffective and only concern a limited number of beneficiaries, or which are not well enough valued, while their cost represented 3.3% of GDP in 2023. Return to the loopholes taxes which are the most stingy.
Who benefits from tax loopholes? These devices can sometimes be expensive. Their cost was estimated at 3.3% of GDP in 2023. However, for 56% of these tax loopholes, we do not know precisely who they benefited from. This is, among other things, what denounces a note from the Court of Auditors published this Friday April 26.
Taxes: the top 5 tax loopholes from which the French benefit the most
No beneficiary identified for 23 tax loopholes
The court shows that for more than 200 schemes, it is impossible to determine the number of beneficiaries. For 23 tax loopholes, no beneficiary could even be identified. Conversely, only 2 schemes benefit more than 10 million people, 22 of them affect between 1 and 10 million beneficiaries. And the tax expenditures with the highest cost are not systematically the best known, points out the Court of Auditors which identifies several tax loopholes.
The tax expenditures with the highest cost are not systematically the best known
The exemption of sums paid for participation, profit-sharing, matching contributions or capital gains sharing in employee savings plans and collective or compulsory company retirement savings plans, For example. The number of beneficiaries of this system is not known, points out the Court of Auditors.
However, its cost is estimated at 2.6 billion euros. The same goes for the reduction in the scope of excise duty on energy products and fuel use in overseas communities, which cost 2 billion euros in 2023.
The relevance of certain measures questions
The Court of Auditors also highlights a significant number of measures which only concern a very small number of beneficiaries at a very low cost, which raises the question of the relevance of the measure.
An example, the exemption from land tax for companies in favor of establishments created in a priority development zone, which only benefited two companies. Unsurprisingly, it therefore recommends better evaluating the effectiveness of tax loopholes and eliminating them, particularly those which have only a few beneficiaries. This is not the first time that the Court of Auditors has pointed out ineffective tax loopholes: the Pinel rental investment system was thus severely criticized by the Court of Auditors in June 2023, the end of this tax loophole that is too expensive for the This status is scheduled for December 2024.