The tax on family holding companies could “have been in the French fiscal toolbox for a long time,” according to the Public Policy Institute

A priori, it is not a bad idea, despite the controversy surrounding the tax on holding companies. The Institute for Public Policy (IPP) quite approves, in a blog note, the attempt to tax the dormant financial assets of family holdings, which appears in the draft finance law (PLF) for 2026.

Economist Laurent Bach emphasizes that the text, which seeks to attack the savings of large fortunes that are not intended to be reinvested in the company, is inspired by American laws, such as the “tax on personal holding companies.”

For him, Article 3 of the PLF includes “elements that could (should?) have long been included in the French fiscal toolkit.” He considers that the text is a supposed “gas factory”, and considers that its complexity is “inevitable” given the powerful means of appeal of the taxpayers to whom it is addressed.

900 million euros of expected profitability

The IPP, whose function is to economically evaluate public policies, puts into perspective the criticism of the low expected profitability of the tax, 900 million euros, underlining that the main thing is to discourage property operations for tax purposes.

Laurent Bach welcomes the planned implementation of a double tax for foreign holdings, with the difference that this time the tax will be paid by the owner of the holding and not the company itself, which, according to him, “would really be equivalent to a mini-ISF.” “Let us now hope that the next debate on this measure lives up to the balanced expectations we have at the moment,” concludes Laurent Bach.

MEPs mistakenly remove Article 3 on holding company tax

The discussion in the Finance Commission of the National Assembly got off to a bad start on Monday, with the suppression of article 3 by the deputies. Many wrongly voted in favor of a right-wing Republican amendment on the taxation of inheritances from holding companies, which was intended not to complement Article 3, but to replace it.

“This is my case and that of other people, declared the president of the LFI Finance Commission, Eric Coquerel: we (understood) that it was a complement to the system and we did not foresee that we were in the process of rewriting and eliminating the tax as it was. It was not a wish, and we will return to this in a public session, starting on Friday, he promised.