How much is the arrogance of the tax administration? By publishing a vitriolic report on the fiasco of the declaration of real estate, the Court of Auditors puts it at 1.3 billion euros! This is the cost of the bug in the “Manage my real estate” service, imposed in 2023 on 34 million French owners. Despite three false starts, alerts from disoriented taxpayers, and confusion from social landlords, the Director General of Public Finances defended his tool to the familiar tune of “Everything is going very well, Madam Marquise”.
The wise men of the Court sing another song, less cheerful: “chaotic” start-up, “inadequate” dematerialized procedure, “ubiquitous” situation, “incomprehension of taxable persons”, “persistence of erroneous taxation” in 2024… Guilty of characterized dissimulation, the officials of Bercy are also of amateurism. Due to a lack of transparency and pedagogy, this so-called “seamless” modernization has caused more than a million wrongful deductions from the housing tax or the tax on vacant housing. Hence a slate of more than a billion which will increase the public debt. The price of inconsistency…
A record among rich countries, the extraordinary French tax pressure was based on two pillars: broad consent to tax and unfailing efficiency in its collection. The first wavers, under the blows of popular revolts which are now recurring. The second has just been damaged by an all-powerful ministry already discredited by its inability to anticipate a deficit that has spiraled out of control. Five years after the success of the withholding tax, the tax department failed to follow the golden rule decreed by Colbert: “Pluck the goose without making it cry”. At the risk of adding social unrest to the budgetary disorder.
