This could be a small revolution for the two million single-parent families counted in France, by INSEE, in 2020. The Assembly adopted, on Thursday, October 6, a law that establishes the tax exemption of alimony for the dependent parent of the son after a separation. It was during a parliamentary niche of her group that the MoDem deputy for Seine-et-Marne, Aude Luquet, defended this bill.
That is, the beneficiary parent integrates the alimony in their reference RFR. While the parent paying it subtracts it from their RFR.
great inequalities
A situation that the MoDem deputy wants to change by exempting this pension from taxes, that is, making it no longer be taken into account in the calculation of the RFR of the beneficiary parents. A tax exemption that the text proposes, however, to top, “within the limit of 4,000 euros per child with a ceiling of 12,000 euros per year”, thus specifies the bill.
To justify this measure, the elected official underlines the existing inequalities between men and women. In 70% of cases, “the custody of the children falls to the mother, compared to not so much in 20% of the father,” recalls the text. According to the report of the Superior Family Council of April 2014, the pension was paid in 97% of cases by the father, we also found out.
However, according to INSEE, women’s pay is 28.5% lower than men’s. A gap that could have been widened a little more by the health crisis. Not to mention that the separation itself is also an aggravating factor of these inequalities.
The pension, a compensation more than an income?
Consequently, the alimony represents less a replacement income than a compensation for the sharing of expenses related to the education of a child in a frequent situation of inequality of resources. However, “it is rare that the alimony covers the real cost of the responsibility of the children who live in the home”, can also be read in the explanatory statement.
In addition, the RFR is a key indicator for the calculation of certain aid. “The beneficiary parent may, if we continue to tax the pension received, lose the benefit of allowances such as APL (personalized housing assistance, editor’s note) or see a drop in family allowances. However, it is often these households that more in difficulty”, specifies the bill.
A measure questioned by the majority
In return, and in order to limit the impact of the measure on tax collection, the group of Democrats had initially proposed “not authorizing the deduction of the payment of the amounts corresponding to alimony”, by the parent who pays. But the article of the text of the law was suppressed in the Commission of Property, before the examination of the text in the Assembly.
Article 3 of the text, held in committee, provides that the loss of tax revenue for the State is “(compensated) in due proportion by creating an additional special tax on tobacco.”
However, the final approval of this bill remains more than uncertain. In front of the hemicycle, the delegate minister for Small and Medium Enterprises, Olivia Grégoire, indicated that she feared “a serious breach in the calculation of the RFR”, since it is the reference indicator in many devices. After saluting the objective of such a measure, the minister denounced a “tool that is not going to work.”
Source: BFM TV
