Does Michel Barnier intend to take eight more days to complete the state budget for 2025? Much better, we hope at Oxfam: this will perhaps be an opportunity for the new Prime Minister to reform inheritance tax, as the non-governmental organisation (NGO) recommended in a note published on 17 September.
At a time when the former European Commissioner is seeking tens of billions of euros to curb growing debt, without stopping “greater tax justice”, As Oxfam said after its appointment, its proposals are timely. Taxing the inheritance of the ultra-rich more heavily could simultaneously meet these two expectations, according to the NGO founded in Great Britain in 1942. “Technically, it is not difficult to eliminate certain tax loopholes and other exemptions, such as the Dutreil pact, argues Cécile Duflot, former environmental minister under François Hollande, now director general of Oxfam France. On the other hand, political courage is required. »
The idea is nothing new. “If we have a preference for risk over life annuities, as is my case, we should prefer inheritance tax to ISF-type taxes”Emmanuel Macron himself declared Risksthe magazine of the French Federation of Insurance Companies in April 2016, therefore before his first election. The economist Jean Pisani-Ferry, close to the President of the Republic, also campaigned in favour of the creation of a “High tax on large inheritances”. But once elected, Emmanuel Macron ruled out this option, considered too politically risky. Will Michel Barnier be sensitive to the Oxfam booster shot?
The growing weight of inheritance
On paper, such an initiative is of great interest. Firstly, for the state coffers: it would allow the recovery of “more than 160 billion euros in thirty years”, Nothing more than the predictable successions of the current French billionaires, according to the NGO. Politically, above all, a reform could partially correct a situation that many economists have been denouncing for years: the growing weight of inheritance in society. From 35% at the beginning of the 1970s, the proportion of French wealth coming from inheritance has risen to 60%, according to a report published in 2021 by the Council of Economic Analysis (CAE), a college of experts responsible for reporting to the Prime Minister.
Far from the declared principles of equality, justice, merit and work, France thus becomes a country of heirs, where the social scale is blocked and where wealth, especially real estate, is concentrated in the hands of a limited number of families. The richest 10% of households owned 47% of total wealth in 2021, compared to 41% in 2010, according to INSEE. “The best way to become a billionaire is, increasingly, to grow up in the womb of a billionaire’s wife.” summarizes Cécile Duflot, acid.
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