The fight against tax fraud has never yielded so much to the government. Bercy services were able to collect 12 billion euros in 2019, according to the figure released on Wednesday in a tweet by Gérald Darmanin, the Minister of Public Accounts. The amounts thus collected in 2019 increased by 50% compared to 2018. This increase can be explained by the strengthening of the investigative arsenal, but also by the fear of the gendarme, through the establishment of a police force. tax and the practice of "name and shame", which consists in making the names of fraudsters public.
The effects of cross-checking data
Another tool to combat this is the cross-checking of data between administrations to detect possible anomalies, which was useful in one in five files last year. This practice, commonly called "data mining", puts the digital revolution at the service of the fight against fraud. "We authorized in the law against fraud [voted in 2018, note ] cross-checking of files, between Urssaf, social services and the tax administration, which can show declaration inconsistencies", details at Europe 1 Émilie Carriou, Member of Parliament for the Meuse, former vice-president of the Finance Committee at the National Assembly and rapporteur for the 2018 law.
"We also have a service which is there to collect all bank transmissions from people, everywhere in Europe, and even in the world," she added. "All of these new tools are ramping up and bearing fruit," she says.
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Émilie Carriou would however like to warn of the risks of excessive digitization in the fight against tax fraud. "There are legal documents to produce, and for that we need staff in the tax audit services," she said. "It is an expertise that only a tax inspector can have."
Efforts to contain VAT fraud
"We still have a number of things to improve," conceded the elected official. "The Court of Auditors considers in particular that there is still a lot of work to be done on the side of VAT fraud. This tax is organized at European level, and there are very complex mechanisms which make it possible to escape this sum to other countries, "she explains. On this point, a Community mechanism could therefore be necessary.