Jean-Luc Mélenchon, do you think stock market investment by individuals should be promoted?
JLM: “We are neither in favor nor opposed to stock market investment by individuals as such. profits that are distributed to them to the share paid to employees.We would like the income from these stock market investments to be taxed at the same level as that of work, via the abolition of the single flat tax.
How to redirect the financial windfall towards sustainability in the broad sense (environmental and social). How to create a real flow of wealth to populations and public services? Whether savings, dividends or capital gains?
JLM: “To redirect the financial windfall towards sustainability in the broad sense, to use your terms, we will modulate corporate tax according to the use of profits between dividends and investment and will remove the tax advantages on French savings invested abroad, particularly for life insurance. We will integrate a climate component into the ISF, which we will restore and strengthen. To do this, the tax administration will rely on a list similar to the European taxonomy ( but correcting it for certain anomalies such as the inclusion of gas or nuclear), which defines the fields of activity that mitigate climate change. The level of taxation will depend on the proportion of these “beneficial” activities in the heritage For example, if a portfolio of assets is 100% made up of activities that mitigate climate change, the person who owns it will not have to pay anything into the climate component of their ISF.
To create a real “trickle down” of wealth towards populations and public services, we will eliminate costly and polluting tax loopholes, strengthen the fight against financial crime, strengthen the progressiveness of the tax system and introduce a universal tax on companies and individuals, in order to circumvent tax avoidance practices.”
Do you intend to keep or modify the taxation related to the PEA?
JLM: “We will abolish the single flat-rate levy that applies to capital income, including that of PEAs. The latter will therefore be subject to the income tax scale, the progressivity of which will also be reinforced with the creation of 14 brackets “.
There are still tax havens in the EU, scandals revealing massive evasions are recurrent, what do you propose?
JLM: “First, it will be a question of increasing the dedicated staff. We will very quickly create 3,900 positions in the various departments involved in tax audits, and will increase the number of magistrates of the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF), as well as the staff of the specialized interregional jurisdictions (JIRS).Details can be found in our “tax justice” plan.
Then, it will be necessary to reform the criminal procedure. We will allow associations to become civil parties in cases of tax evasion, will strengthen the protection of whistleblowers, will create a national chamber of financial investigation in addition to the national financial prosecutor’s office (PNF) in order to allow a phase of judicial investigation with specialized judges, will really remove the Bercy lock and put an end to the legal convention of public interest (CJIP) which allows those guilty of tax fraud to avoid the criminal sanction and to negotiate their fine. We will also strengthen the criminal procedure by broadening the sanctions provided for intermediaries complicit in tax evasion, such as tax law firms, by strengthening their obligations to declare the tax optimization schemes they draw up and by creating an offense of incitement to tax evasion. Finally, the obligation to declare accounts held abroad will be extended to legal persons and the possibilities of sanctioning “abuse of rights”, which consists in using a legal text contrary to the objectives actually pursued by the authors of the text with the aim of evading taxes, and the sanctions against them, will be reinforced.
As part of our tax revolution, companies will pay the French rate for the portion of corporation tax corresponding to their activity in France. To do this, the tax authorities will calculate the tax that a company should owe if all its worldwide profits had been taxed at 25%: France will recover the share of this “tax deficit” which is its rightful place. If the company makes 10% of its sales in France, France will recover 10%, whether it is located in Ireland, Luxembourg or the Seychelles. Similarly, we will implement the universal tax on individuals so that there is no longer any purely fiscal interest in moving abroad for a French person. Finally, we will establish an exhaustive and credible list of tax havens, chosen according to criteria of tax fairness (minimum effective tax rate and criterion of economic substance) and the fight against money laundering (transparency on the beneficial owners of companies).
We will also introduce a real public reporting system (collection of information on the subsidiaries of large companies located abroad), country by country, so as to compel multinationals to publish key information on the taxes they pay and their activities, for each country in which they operate. Contrary to the system currently in force, which provides for a simple confidential transmission of information to the tax administration, the public nature thus takes on an additional dissuasive role for companies (name and shame). We will set up a national financial cadastre, on the model of the real estate cadastre, allowing the State to have traceability, to regulate finance, to correctly calculate the tax of its residents and to cooperate effectively with other States engaging in the same process to put an end to the concealment of fortunes and the avoidance of taxes.
What fiscal and legal framework should be applied to crypto-currencies?
JLM: “Today we do not consider the blockchain, in its current operating and usage methods, as a technology providing solutions for the major challenges facing humanity. financial speculation tools, which must be supervised and regulated as such, in the same way as other speculative practices, as soon as they generate enrichment.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s program in full here.