The “pace” of future tax cuts in France will depend on the level of growth expected for the country, which will be revised in September for the years 2023 and 2024, the Minister of Economy and Finance said on Sunday. “We want to continue in this direction of lowering taxes on households and on businesses,” indicated Bruno Le Maire on LCI, reiterating on the sidelines of the Aix-en-Provence Economic Meetings the tax relief strategy followed for years. years by the government.
“Then there is a reality. We are perfectly aware that there is a slowdown in growth everywhere in the world, especially in Europe,” he added. “At the end of September”, on the occasion of the presentation of the draft budget for 2024, “I will give the new growth prospects for 2023 and 2024”, he continued. “We will see if this slowdown also translates into a slowdown in growth in France. From there, I will make proposals to the President of the Republic on the rate of tax reduction”.
The government is currently counting on a 1% increase in France’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2023, a forecast higher than that of INSEE (0.6%) and the Banque de France (0.7%). . It then anticipates growth of 1.6% in 2024. Questioned by AFP, the Ministry of Economy and Finance did not wish to indicate whether growth would be revised downwards.
After having already been halved at the end of Emmanuel Macron’s first five-year term, a production tax (CVAE) is intended to disappear completely by 2024, which represents a loss of tax revenue of eight billion euros, distributed between 2023 and 2024. Regarding households, after the abolition of the housing tax and a reduction in income tax, the government has promised additional tax cuts for the middle classes, to the tune of 2 billion euros by 2027.
Regarding the draft budget for 2024, which should provide billions of euros in savings to redress the drained public finances, Bruno Le Maire confirmed that he wanted to “switch from brown taxation to green taxation” in order to “accelerate the pace of decarbonization of our economy”. “We will increase, from the 2024 budget, taxation on all fossil fuels”, and a tax on plane tickets “is one of the options”, he said. “Anything that increases the tax burden on fossil fuels, anything that pollutes, makes sense,” he insisted. Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said on Saturday that the state would mobilize an additional 7 billion euros in 2024 to double the rate of reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in France and meet the climate objectives for 2030.
