France is increasingly effective at controlling accounts abroad. A million in 2018, Bercy now has more than three million accounts held by French taxpayers outside the territory. The Ministry of the Economy is more and more effective in its fight against tax evasion according to our editorialist Daniel Fortin.

EDITORIAL

This is a giant step in the fight against tax evasion. In 2019, Bercy has data of 3.5 million French taxpayers held abroad. That's three times more than last year. An explosion that our columnist Daniel Fortin, editor-in-chief at Les Echos, explains with a determining factor.

It is the result of an agreement signed two years ago between OECD countries to put an end to bank secrecy. They had then established a system of automatic exchange of information. In concrete terms, this means that banks must send to the countries the identity of the bank account owners and the amount of their assets on deposit. So be careful, it does not mean that everyone has defrauded, but it is a database that allows the tax administration to verify that these accounts abroad have been declared. And it works, because before this agreement, in 2018 France had been able to examine only 4,000 accounts, which it had had to claim for example, in Luxembourg or in Switzerland. In 2020, it will be three and a half million, it becomes difficult to pass through the cracks

But does it bring money back to France?

So for now the numbers are still rare. We only know that between 2000 and 2017, France would have recovered nearly eight billion euros in net tax revenue following what is modestly called rectifying statements, not to say adjustments. Given the volume that is being achieved, this new database could reach a higher amount in the future, and every year it is handy for plugging the holes of a budget.