It is the flagship measure of the left to reduce the public deficit. And also the one who has aroused the greatest amount of debates in recent days. While the new Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu is looking for billions of euros in savings as part of the 2026 budget, Zucman’s tax would only allow up to 20 billion euros in revenues per year, according to its promoters. Starting with the one at the origin, the economist Gabriel Zucman.
As a reminder, its system plans to tax up to 2% of the assets of more than 100 million euros and would refer to 1,800 fiscal households. Problem, the yield of 20 billion euros advanced by Gabriel Zucman is far from convincing all his classmates.
On a platform published in Le Monde, seven of them (including Philippe Aghion, professor at the Collège de France, Christian Gollier, director of the School of Economics of Toulouse or Xavier Jaravel, associate professor at the London School of Economics) judges the evaluation of Gabriel Zucman over Logg. Rather, they have the income of the order of 5 billion euros. Main reason: the behavioral responses of taxpayers led by the tax. Some may be pushed into exile, while others would implement tax optimization strategies to escape taxes.
A 4 times less important performance?
To support their words, the seven economists are based in particular on a recent study of the Economic Analysis Council (CAE).
By observing the impact of taxes on the fortune implemented in the past in France, and especially in Denmark and Sweden, this independent research organization attached to Matignon first points out that if the tax exile linked to this measure has a “marginal effect” in economic activity, the phenomenon still amputates the revenues expected significantly.
In this case, “for each euro of recipe collected mechanically by an increase in taxes on high heritage”, 20 cents disappear due to the flight of the taxpayers in question.
But more than fiscal exile, it is optimization behaviors that cause loss of longer -term income: 54 cents would evaporate in case of an increase in one euro taxes. In the end, therefore, a total of 74 cents would lack the call. In other words, effective performance would amount to 26 cents, four times less than the expected revenues, hence the estimate of 5 billion and not 20 advanced by economists in their tribune in the world.
“There will be no possibility to escape taxes”
“Zucman’s tax would certainly constitute an unprecedented device, and it is impossible to know if the optimization or exile behaviors would differentiate from those observed in the past in other contexts,” however, they recognize economists. However, “it seems more prudent base for fiscal income estimates in cases that incorporate reactions comparable to those observed during previous reforms, instead of limiting themselves to a purely mechanical calculation.”
If it is not aware of these phenomena of exile and Tax optimization, Gabriel Zucman Reures, However, that it was possible by poorly calibrated reforms: “The Wealth Tax as it was practicing in France as in MosT Other European Countries Did Not Work: It Was Was Riddled Exemptions, Ceiling, Deduction Which Are So Many Machines.
He is defending precisely a measure that would eliminate all these defects: “What I propose is to do the opposite: the ISF began in a million, there would begin at 100 million, there would be no exemption or deduction that it is,” he said, stating that “there will be no possibility of escaping the tax. Therefore, a significant expected performance.”
Source: BFM TV
