Fourteen installments and as many questions. Increasing taxes is the scary argument in the New Popular Front program. To reassure, the personalities of the left alliance, like https://twitter.com/partisocialiste/status/1806410414743273611 (PS) or Manuel Bompard (LFI), multiply their interventions during televised debates to explain that there will be no tax increase for 92% of French people.
“Those who earn less than 4,000 euros net per month will pay less or as much tax as today,” said Manuel Bompard on June 25. And yes, there will be more taxes for the 8%, and in particular for the 0.1%, the richest who today pay less taxes proportionally than the middle classes. » Going from 5 to 14 income tax brackets allows “more progressivity”.
“Wacky” statements
A threshold that did not convince Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who indicated on TF1 that La France Insoumise had proposed in an amendment to make the generalized social contribution (CSG) progressive in the 2022 finance bill. This tax levied on different sources of income (work, capital, retirement) with a single rate finances social protection. For him, the CSG rate increases “from 2,200 euros” of salary with LFI.
“Attal is talking nonsense,” says Eric Coquerel (LFI), the former chairman of the finance committee, to 20 Minutes. “Calculations on less than 4,000 euros are made by accumulating an income tax with 14 brackets plus the fact of making the entire CSG progressive.”
Contacted, Thomas Piketty, an economist who advocates for more tax justice, believes that Gabriel Attal’s statements on tax increases to 2,200 euros of monthly income “are totally far-fetched and simply aim to scare, without any concern for the reality of the proposals”. The Prime Minister’s campaign team has not yet responded to our requests for clarification on this threshold. Gabriel Attal again denounced the “assumed tax bludgeoning” of the New Popular Front on BFMTV-RMC on June 28.
Slices not yet defined
What about the viral table of BFMTV showing the 14 tranches proposed by LFI in 2022? “Not everything that is currently circulating is good,” continues Éric Coquerel. First, there is a difference with 2022, it is that we removed the marital quotient [c’est-à-dire la mutualisation des revenus des conjoints dans la déclaration d’impôts pour un couple marié ou pacsé], this is not in the agreement. » The 14 brackets of income tax or progressive CSG have not yet been defined, he explains.
“For now, we haven’t had time, we have to redo the calculations, but the objective is the same. In the progressive scales that we will put in place, we will ensure that people who are below 4,000 euros do not pay more taxes,” he pledges. The New Popular Front has set up a simulator which allows it to calculate its tax rate and which compares the current tax with that proposed by the NFP. It is from 4,008 euros of monthly income for a single person that the contribution increases, without specifying the sections or the calculation.
“A neutral effect on the state budget” in 2022
In 2022, the liberal institute Montaigne had evaluated the measures of La France insoumise, including those of the reintroduction of the 14 income tax brackets and the progressive CSG. It estimated that in the short term, making the CSG progressive, combined with a reform of income tax, would have “a neutral effect on the State budget”, but that in the medium term it “would increase the disposable income of households with low or median incomes and decrease that of households with higher incomes”, but since these households are more affluent, we could “see a positive effect on consumption”.
For Thomas Piketty, it is “completely unnecessary to increase taxes on lower incomes, and essential to start by involving billionaires and multinationals in order to consider asking for efforts at these income levels”. And added that the “important” point of the New Popular Front program is that “the new revenue comes mainly from the tax on large fortunes and the tax on multinationals, and not from the income tax “.
