OPINION. “Make France a tax haven!” », by Ferréol Delmas, general director of the Responsible Ecology think tank

The Zucman tax is on the way to becoming, for part of the left, the alpha and omega of tax justice. Taxing the assets of the richest people at 2% each year would be the martingale that would finance both the debt, public services and, incidentally, the ecological transition.

The reasoning seduces by its arithmetical simplicity. It collapses as soon as we confront it with reality: that of mobile capital, of entrepreneurs who have already started to organize their departure, and of a French economy which needs investments more than one-off tax revenues.

We propose the opposite. Do not punish wealth, but guide it. Not to scare her away, but to make her land with us. Let's make France a tax haven for any taxpayer who places their personal assets in the service of our ecological sovereignty.

Our proposal is aimed at people, not businesses, like the Zucman tax to which it responds. It targets individuals who decide to put their money into the French ecological transition.

He can subscribe to the capital of a decarbonization start-up, take a stake in an industrial SME, buy shares in a certified French company or acquire shares in specialized funds. It is this individual choice that the tax must reward.

Concretely, each taxpayer could open a sovereign investment account, based on the PEA model. The securities held there would benefit from a triple advantage: they are not subject to any wealth tax, capital gains realized after a minimum holding period are exempt, and sums paid into the capital of eligible companies entitle them to a substantial reduction in income tax.

This regime does not transform corporate taxation: corporate tax remains the same for everyone. What changes is the taxation of the person who chooses to finance them.

There is no shortage of targets: new generation nuclear power, battery and rare earth sectors, low-carbon agriculture, hydraulic infrastructure, green biotechnologies, decarbonization of industry. The financing needs are abysmal, and the State is exhausted.

This is not a gift to the rich. It’s a bet on efficiency. A euro captured by taxes and redistributed by the bureaucracy never has the same impact as a euro invested directly by someone who commits their responsibility, their know-how and their network.

The Zucman tax promises a theoretical return of 15 to 20 billion euros per year. It superbly ignores the effects of avoidance, tax optimization and undervaluation of assets, which have significantly eroded the proceeds of wealth taxes wherever they have been attempted.

Machine-translated from French