PARIS: France handed out one billion euros in tax rebates to its richest citizens last year, the head of parliament’s finance committee has revealed. Some 3,500 households worth more than 10 million euros received most of that sum in rebates thanks to a cap on wealth tax.
The French government would have been 1.077 billion euros richer in 2015 were it not for the ceiling on the wealth tax, a finance ministry reply to a question by finance committee chairman Gilles Carrez has shown. The limit means that households cannot pay more than 75 percent of their year’s income in the impôt sur la fortune (ISF), which is a tax on their assets.
The average rebate was 142,480 euros but the 3,590 richest households, who have assets of 10 million euros or more, were let off 944 million euros in total, an average of 263,000 euros each. They would have paid 3.6 times more were it not for the cap.
Although the number of people paying the tax continues to rise, state income has stayed almost the same thanks to the limit. A total of 342,942 households filed declarations for ISF in 2015, up from 331,010 the previous year, but the state only netted 26 million euros more, 5.224 billion euros compared to 5.108 billion in 2014.
That is because 9,575 households benefited from the cap, up from 8,872 the previous year, pushing the cost to the state up 19 percent.
