The president of Medef, Patrick Martin, called on Thursday for the removal of the deduction for professional expenses from which retirees benefit in their income tax return, which he considers “aberrant”.
“For a retiree to benefit from a tax exemption for professional expenses”, “for 4 and a half billion euros per year”, it is unnatural” and “aberrant”, estimated the leader of the first organization employer, interviewed Thursday on BFM TV/RMC.
This tax reduction for professional expenses, from which all workers benefit, makes it possible to reduce declared income by 10%, up to 4,000 euros. Removing it would lead to an increase in income tax for certain retirees, and would cause others, who are non-taxable today, to become so.
The president of the Retirement Orientation Council (COR), Gilbert Cet, also said he was in favor, on Monday, of “the removal of the 10% tax reduction on pensions.”
Patrick Martin also called for a review of the reduced CSG rate which applies to retirement pensions compared to that on salaries and property income. “We must question a certain number of systems: (…) retirees have a lower CSG rate, why?” he asked.
The CSG – the generalized social contribution – is one of the main taxes for individuals in France. It brought in, with the CRDS (contribution for the repayment of the social debt), 156 billion euros in 2023, much more than the income tax (97.1 billion), according to INSEE.
The CSG rate on retirement and disability pensions is a maximum of 8.3% – with two reduced rates for low pensions -, compared to 9.2% for salaries or income from assets.
“I have the greatest respect for retirees, (…) but we cannot continue to place the burden on economic agents, primarily businesses, which are already the most taxed in the world,” estimated Patrick Martin.
He also opposed a change in the legal retirement age, raised to 64 years by the 2023 pension reform. Environmentalists and communists, who place the repeal of this reform at the top of their demands, took part in a second meeting in Bercy on Wednesday evening with the socialists.
“We must not touch the +yield+ of the reform” which “is essentially due to the legal retirement age of 64”, insisted Patrick Martin.
In an interview with L’Express on Wednesday, he also pleaded for a reopening of “the question of capitalization retirement”, in which the contributions of working people will be used for their own retirement, as opposed to the pay-as-you-go pension in force. In France.
