Tax fraud remains very difficult to assess, notes the Senate finance committee, in a report published Wednesday October 26.
During the electoral period, the fight against fraud is often the magic ingredient which makes it possible to complete the financing of the programs. The candidate Les Républicains (LR) Valérie Pécresse promised to recover 15 billion euros by tightening the controls, as much as Marine Le Pen (national rally), who wanted, in addition, to devote a new ministry to her, while Emmanuel Macron quoted The fight against fraud as one of the instruments making it possible to generate savings of the same magnitude. Costs at the time deemed optimistic by specialists, fraud, in particular tax, remaining very difficult to assess.
This is one of the conclusions of the information report published by the Senate finance committee on Wednesday, October 26. Nineteen senators from all political currents have looked into the balance sheet of the law of October 23, 2018 relating to the fight against tax fraud, making twenty recommendations. This text, adopted at the time after the revelation of a series of scandals, from “Panama Papers” to “Swissleaks”, aimed to better detect and sanction fraud, with in particular the creation of a new “tax police”, Placed under the supervision of Bercy. The law also put an end to the famous “lock” which reserved for the tax administration the ability to initiate prosecution in matters of tax fraud.
The Senate report draws up a rather favorable assessment of the law, nevertheless proposing some developments. The lack of evaluation of fraud thus remains one of the most problematic points. If the tax control has produced revenue since 2018 (+ 38 % despite the health crisis, at 10.6 billion euros in 2021), thanks in particular to the increased use of artificial intelligence and the conclusion of some tax files like That of Google, its effectiveness remains difficult to measure.
Costs of tax fraud vary from simple to triple, the Solidaires-Finances Public Syndicate providing the highest evaluation, between 80 and 100 billion euros, an amount disputed each year by Bercy. “One question remains unanswered, underlines the report of the Senate. Does the tax administration manage to recover 10 %, 20 % or 50 % of the defrauded amounts?”
complex diagrams and difficult to detect
Unlike several of its neighbors, France does not have a tool to assess tax fraud-“The United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Denmark, Cays and Australia have such assessments, which are based on random and/or targeted checks, “recalls the report, which requests the annual publication of data by INSEE and the taxman, by 2024.” We will offer an amendment to the project 2023 budget to follow this recommendation, “says Jean-François Husson (Les Républicains), the general rapporteur of the budget in the Senate.
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