2023-05-09 05:16:09
The government’s stated priority since the beginning of the year, the executive’s plan to fight tax evasion must be officially presented on Tuesday. But the Minister of Public Accounts reveals the main lines in an interview with the newspaper Le Monde this Monday evening. Gabriel Attal announces that he wants to increase by 25% the tax audits of “biggest assets” by the end of the five-year period and control “every two years” the 100 largest market capitalizations. “Our priority: to make the ultra-rich and the multinationals who defraud pay what they owe”said the Minister Delegate in charge of Public Accounts
Announced a long time ago and initially expected for the end of the first quarter, the presentation of this plan has been postponed several times. The fight once morest fraud is one of the pillars of the government’s strategy to restore public financesalongside growth and control of public spending.
February 22, in an interview with Parisian
Gabriel Attal had indicated that “the most serious cases of fraud” as “under-declaration of tax profits for companies, under-declaration of income, or even tax credit fraud for individuals”, represent 5.5 billion euros. VAT Fraud alone represents, according to INSEE, between 20 and 25 billion euros per year
. The tip of the iceberg, the amounts collected by the tax authorities following tax audits reached 14.6 billion euros in 2022, i.e. 1.2 billion more than in 2021.
Sanctions which might go as far as the deprivation of the right to vote
Gabriel Attal announces this Monday that the sanctions will be toughened once morest fraudsters, in particulart “for the most serious faults” for which a “penalty of fiscal and civic indignity” may be pronounced, in the form of a deprivation of tax reduction or credit as well as the right to vote “for a certain period”said the minister.
1,500 recruitments, “ridiculous” for the CGT Public Finances
He also announced the creation of a tax intelligence service at Bercy dedicated to the fight once morest major international fraud, with around a hundred “elite agents” by the end of the five-year period, which will use intelligence techniques such as “eavesdropping, data capture, beaconing”. These will be “1,500 additional staff” which will be dedicated to the fight once morest tax evasion by 2027, he further indicated.
“1,500 hires is ridiculous”reacted this Monday on franceinfo
Olivier Villois, finance inspector and national secretary CGT Public Finances, who affirms that that 15,000 jobs have been cut over the past ten years in public finance. “So 1,500 jobs is well below what the DGFIP would need to recover all the evaded taxes”, believes Olivier Villois, who even speaks of “making fun of”. For him, “the means are very largely below what it is possible to do”.
“Easing the pressure on the small taxpayer”
By attacking the wealthiest, the Minister insists at the same time on the idea of“relieve the pressure on the small taxpayer, the small boss, by massifying” regularizations rather than resorting to controls and by establishing “an automatic penalty waiver for the first error”. Another gesture towards taxpayers in general: the creation of a “automatic reverse penalty in favor of the taxpayer in the event of an administrative error”, a promis M. Attal.
Targeted VAT fraud
In recent weeks, Gabriel Attal has mentioned in the press other measures
of the plan to combat tax evasion. To better fight once morest VAT fraud, the government has decided to speed up the implementation of the electronic invoicing between companies.
The idea will be to oblige companies to link their accounting systems to those of the administration, in order to set up a kind of corporate withholding tax. This system was to gradually come into force from July 1, 2024. It will finally be put in place from June 2023 for CAC 40 companies, then by 2026 for the smallest ones.
The government plan must also provide quantified recovery targets “depending on the type of fraud”Gabriel Attal told AFP in March, but also an evaluation body “in order to better understand the level of fraud” who are currently “very estimated”. The amount of tax evasion in France is in fact not the subject of any official estimate, but potentially constitutes a windfall of tens of billions to be recovered by the State.
Solidaires finances publics estimates that all tax evasion in France reaches between 80 and 100 billion euros per year, much more than social fraud which would amount to 20 or 25 billion, essentially for “undeclared work”according to the union.
Future measures for “social” fraud
“The social security contribution fraud is estimated at around 8 billion euros” dont “around 2.8 billion euros” the fraud “to social benefits”according to the Minister of Public Accounts. “A euro subtracted from national solidarity, whether it is a euro of tax paid which is not paid or a euro of social allowance received which should not be received, it is a euro which is taken from the French who work and pay taxes for better public services.”
In this logic, measures to fight once morest social fraud will be presented “by the end of the month”. They will include the elimination of the payment of allowances to foreign bank accounts from July 1. To do this, the government wishes to cross-reference the files of the social security funds with those of the bank accounts and verify “systematically the existence of people” who benefit from these allowances.
Bercy also wants to better monitor the payment of allowances “for which there is a condition of residence in France” for people who live more abroad than in France. For this, the ministry plans to work with the airlines to trace their whereregardings.
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