Would the French tax system be inequitable? This is one of the main arguments of Zucman’s tax defenders that defends the establishment of a minimum 2% floor tax in the assets of more than 100 million euros to ensure that billionaires pay their fair part of taxes.
Because today, the richest would pay in proportion to its income and “all the mandatory taxes included, Half less taxes than the average of the French, “according to Gabriel Zucman. An affirmation disputed by some of his companions.
To see more clearly, you must resort to the study of the Institute of Public Policies (PPI) that refers. It turns out that, related to economic income (tax revenues to which we particularly add the profits of companies controlled by fiscal households), the general tax rate becomes regressive of 0.1% of the richest households. More specifically, it falls from 46% for the richest 0.1%, to 38.7% for the “clan” of 0.01%, to 29.6% for 0.001% and 26% for 0.0002% that the IPP calls “billionaires.”
57% of the French beneficiaries of redistribution
Clearly, the Ultra Rico pays almost half of the rich that the rich, in particular because their income consists mainly of profits of their unpublished companies (subject to corporate taxes), and because some use tax optimization practices through family holdings, which Gabriel Zucman denounces.
But billionaires pay less taxes than the average of the French? In BFM Business, the vice president of the Economic Analysis Council, Xavier Jaravel, acknowledges that the French tax system is regressive “at the top of the distribution”, but states that this is not the case “compared to the middle classes” or with the “popular classes”.
“We must not deny the very important problem of optimization through holdings, but again, it is not a question blackening the table. The French sociofiscal system is still very redistributive,” he still attributes to the economist in an interview with ECOS.
This is confirmed by an INSE study that indicates that 57% of the French are net redistribution beneficiaries. In other words: 57% of households receive benefits, several transfers or public services more than they pay.
“This part of the net beneficiaries of the expanded redistribution amounts to 49% around the average standard of living, against more than 85% among the most modest and 13% among the richest 5%,” said the Statistics Institute.
The impact of social transfers in the tax rate
Some economists also criticize Gabriel Zucman for not taking into account social transfers (RSA, activity bonus …) in the income of popular classes to calculate their general tax rate.
In L’E ext, the economist of Berkeley Antoine Levy illustrated this problem with the example of a person who receives “200 euros of salaries and 646 euros of RSA”. “Therefore, it is 846 euros to live. If you spend this whole amount, you will pay around 169 euros in VAT, the equivalent of 20% of its consumption. But in the calculation of Zucman, Blanchard and Pisany-Ferry, this tax rate is reported not to total income (846 euros), but only at 200 euros of salary salary. A calculation considered” absurd “by the economist who also disputes possession of social contributions and, in particular, retirement contributions that “entitle future services” and are “a form of income delay.”
However, for Gabriel Zucman, this analysis has “real limits.” In a long article published in July in the magazine Le Grand Continent, the economist was justified by first explaining that “in practice, households do not receive transfers such as negative taxes, for good reasons: for example, because taxes are immediately deduced, where transfers are often paid with a gap and a certain degree of uncertainty.”
Then he declared that even when removing monetary transfers “billionaires continue to pay significantly less taxes and contributions (26%) than the media françois -45% of all families, employment, housing, poverty and social exclusion and much less than most distribution decilas.”
Finally, he acknowledges that the general tax rate “falls to 28% for the average French” if we exclude retirement spending and even -6% “if we eliminate everything else (health, education, police, defense, justice, etc.)”.
But “all this does not remain value to the basic problem”, namely that “even the clear transfers perceived, (the billionaires) pay less than the taxpayers located under them: the superior executives, to simplify”, estimates that the economist is what this approach only has the “deserved to remember that public expenses are very unequivocal, that we must be so important, it is so important that it is so important, it is so important. Very important.
Source: BFM TV
