The committee for the evaluation of capital tax reforms was put in place in December 2018, one year after the government had launched the reforms and after they were passed by legislation. The reforms have introduced a single flat-rate tax (PFU) on savings income and replaced the wealth tax (ISF) with a real estate wealth tax (IFI). Futhermore, a corporate income tax (IS) reduction, complementary to these changes, has been scheduled for a five-year period.
In its first report[1] published in October 2019 the committee presented the context of the reforms. It outlined the scope of activity covered by capital taxation in France and the weight of the latter in the overall tax system. It reviewed the tax rules before the reform and gave a precise description of the reform content. It also carried out a review of the state of the art of the theoretical and empirical literature on capital taxation at the French and international level. Moreover, the committee reminded the results of the available ex ante evaluations of the 2018 reforms, and presented its first ex post analyses of the impact of these reforms on taxpayers and public finances. Due to a lack of data and hindsight necessary for a thorough evaluation, the committee limited its ex-post analysis to initial qualitative results, such as hearings of professional associations and a survey on portfolio managers, as well as a description of the quantitative work it would do later.
This year, the committee has advanced in several directions. First of all, it has completed its work on the reform context. In particular, it has conducted a thorough analysis on how France stands before and after the reforms compared to other developed economies in terms of wealth and income taxation. In addition, the committee carried out an ex-post evaluation of the 2013 tax reform, which was symmetrical to the 2018 PFU reform as it replaced a flat-rate tax with a progressive tax. This 2013 reform happened sufficiently long ago to generate enough data to assess the reform results. The committee also provided additional figures comparing the distribution of dividends received in 2018 to the distribution of dividends received in 2017, and the number of wealthy tax residents moving in and out of the country in 2018. Finally, the committee presented the first evaluation results of the flat tax (PFU) and of the wealth tax transformation into the real estate wealth tax, even as these results remain preliminary, particularly concerning the wealth tax reform.
From this year’s work, based on studies by academic[2] and public administration teams, the committee has come to the following conclusions....
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Click here to read the full report in french
Click here to read the first opinion of the evaluation committee on capital tax reforms
[1] France Stratégie (2019), Comité d'évaluation des réformes de la fiscalité du capital, First report October.
[2] In particular, France Stratégie subsidised the CRED - Centre de recherches en économie et droit, a team from the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas - for the evaluation of the 2013 scale and the introduction of the UFP, and the IPP for the evaluation of the ISF and its transformation into an IFI. The reports produced by these teams are posted online on the France Stratégie website.
