Barthélémy Philippe / Photo credits: STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP 11:31 a.m., April 4, 2024
Faced with the public deficit, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal is considering taxing annuities. Rent, shares... The government wants to tax exceptional income. To better understand what could be taxed, a “task force” has been appointed and will report its conclusions within two months. In the meantime, the head of government's project remains very vague.
This is Gabriel Attal's new favorite to stop the slippage of public finances. The Prime Minister wants to “tax pensions”. To do this, a task force which brings together the different components of the majority has been appointed to work on the subject. The conclusions will be delivered within two months. In the meantime, the Prime Minister's project remains very abstract, because the notion of annuity is broad. If the rents received by an owner or the dividends from a shareholder are annuities, the latter are already taxed for the most part.
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“We will not increase taxes”, insists Bruno Le Maire
Target exceptional profiles
"The notion of annuity is a very general notion which covers very diverse realities. So, there are several notions of annuity. There are already many annuities which are already taxed like stock market capital gains or -real estate values", explains economist Jacques Percebois at the microphone of Europe 1.
The government seems to tend to target exceptional profits, those of large companies taking advantage of extraordinary circumstances or those of their shareholders. “We are going to chase away the products of inappropriate financial optimization, resulting from crises or resulting from support from the State during the crisis. That will be our trajectory. It is not to increase taxes. It is also not about taxing the savings of the French,” assures Renaissance MP Nadia Hai, member of the task force.
The flop of the tax on energy companies’ rents
But there is an unflattering precedent for the executive: the tax on energy companies' income. The latter was expected to bring in more than 3 billion euros in 2023. It ultimately only generated 300 million euros in tax revenue.
Finally, other avenues studied by the government: renew the tax on motorway companies. The government could also create the tax on share buybacks, mentioned by Emmanuel Macron last spring.