On France Inter, Alexandre Bompard estimated that temporary taxes in France were often perpetuated and that the Barnier government’s “fiscal shock” took France back 10 years.
Many taxes presented as “temporary” have finally become “definitive”, declared this Thursday on France Inter the CEO of Carrefour Alexandre Bompard, estimating that the measures announced in the 2025 draft budget are a “political head to tail” by compared to previous governments.
“I know my tax classics, the list of so-called temporary taxes which have become definitive…” said Alexandre Bompard, also president of the main employers’ organization in large-scale distribution, the FCD.
“When I was a young student, we created the CRDS for two years”, a contribution for the repayment of the social debt, a tax intended to absorb the social security debt put in place in 1996, he said. recalled.
“It still exists today, and this is the case for a whole bunch of taxes. In 2027, someone else will tell us that the situation of public finances is not getting better” and that the taxes put into effect place will have to be continued, he anticipated.
Raphaël Legendre’s Editorial: Taxes are not the right strategy – 17/10
“This brings us back to platoon queue”
More generally, he considered that “the measures announced in the finance bill are a head to tail of policy”, after a “first mandate and a half which was not a mandate of gifts” for businesses ” but consisted of bringing France back into the European average” of corporate taxation.
“We have regained average competitiveness, investment and employment,” judged Alexandre Bompard. With in particular the exceptional contribution requested from the largest companies to remedy the deterioration of public accounts, “this brings us back to the situation of 2014, at the back of the pack” in Europe, he noted.
The FCD, which brings together almost the entire supermarket sector, deplored earlier in the week in a press release the “tax bombing organized by the Barnier government”, assuring that it was “up to the State to shoulder the effort recovery of public accounts instead of transferring responsibility for its deficit to businesses.
Secretary of State for Consumer Affairs Laurence Garnier said on Wednesday that everyone must weigh “the imperative to agree to make an effort”.
The Budget Minister’s services are also looking into the possible problem of distortion between major retail players, according to a source in Bercy, while the organization of certain brands into cooperative models or via the operation of franchise stores makes them only marginally concerned by the exceptional contribution.
