Property tax in Paris: owners give in to Anne Hidalgo after “excessive increases”

A tax increase that does not pass and is invited to court. The Paris administrative court refused to transmit to the Council of State the Priority Questions of Constitutionality (QPC) that a twenty owners on the subject of “disproportionate increases” in property taxes in Paris.

No safeguards to control the increase in this property tax

In February 2024, these taxpayers had in fact brought an action before the court to request “discharge from the property tax contribution on built properties” to which they had been subject for the year 2023. At the same time, they had asked the same court to transmit a Priority Question of Constitutionality (QPC) to the Council of State. A mechanism that allows supreme judges to be questioned on the conformity of a law with the French Constitution.

The Parisian owners were in fact questioning the legality of the law “on the adjustment of local direct taxation”: its provisions are contrary to the “principle of equality” between French taxpayers according to them since they “do not provide for crazy” to regulate the increase in this property tax.

“By only setting a very relative limit for local authorities, which can multiply the rate (…) by two and a half each year, thus leading to disproportionate increases in property tax, these provisions disregard the principle of equality,” explained their lawyers.

A population density “incomparable” with other cities

They also saw it as an “attack on property rights” since Parisian taxpayers “saw their property tax (…) increase by 7.1% while at the same time the real increase in rents was capped at 3.5%”. “Since 2018, property tax has been indexed to an inappropriate index that is neither indicative of inflation in France nor indicative of the increase in rents”, they also argued in their submissions.

In judgments dated May 14, 2024, which have just been made public, the Paris administrative court finds on the contrary that “the legislator (…) has established (…) limits within which the community is authorized to vary the rate of the various taxes it collects”.

Furthermore, “the principle of equality before the law does not prevent the legislator from regulating different situations differently, nor from derogating from equality for reasons of general interest,” the Parisian judges point out. It is then just necessary that “the difference in treatment is directly related to the purpose of the law that establishes it.”

However, Parisian owners “cannot be considered to be in an identical situation” to that of owners “located outside Paris”: the capital “concentrates a population density (…) that is incomparable with other communes, or even with certain departments”.

“The legislator was able to take into account the specificities of the territorial organisation of the city of Paris (…) without disregarding (…) the principle of equality”, the Paris administrative court therefore concluded. Since the applicants’ arguments “are not serious”, there is “no need to transmit them to the Council of State”.

MJ-PressPepper

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