By increasing the Parisian property tax by 52 %, the mayor puts the finances of the capital at the center of the debates.
by Laurent Telo
Analysis. It is a “turning point” in Parisian sauce that Anne Hidalgo suddenly caught on Monday, November 7, when she decided to increase the property tax. She resigned herself, against all odds, after several weeks of procrastination and resistance to her environmental allies who urged her. She ended up deciding after looking, in the smallest corners, if it was possible to make 250 million euros in savings to complete her budget in the face of inflation, the energy crisis and the drop in revenues related to the health crisis caused by the coronavirus. In vain. An increase in rupture with its electoral promise, during the 2020 municipal campaign, to sanctify local taxes. An increase that Parisian owners ingest in non -homeopathic monodosis since the tax jumped 52 %, going from 13.5 %to 20.5 %. Even if the rate imposed by the capital remains below the national average.
The mayor of Paris knew the political disadvantage of such a decision. She sets a little more a municipal opposition already heated white since her return after her misadventures in the presidential election (1.75 % of the votes in the first round). The Republicans (LR) see it as irrefutable new proof that the finances of the city of Paris are in bright red.
Rachida Dati is frantically agitated, for months, the inevitability of a budgetary supervision. As for the presidential majority, stung to the lives by the accusations of Anne Hidalgo, who rejects the responsibility of the tense situation on Emmanuel Macron and the financial disengagement of the State in favor of local authorities, it continues to counter-attack. Gabriel Attal, Minister in charge of public accounts and putative candidate at the Paris City Hall in 2026, compared Anne Hidalgo’s budgetary strategy to a Ponzi pyramid, criminal cavalry system. The city of Paris could file a defamation complaint.
no third term
By also strongly increasing the property tax, did the Parisian councilor committed a political fault, four years from the next municipal elections, by placing, despite herself, the debate on the finances of the capital in the heart, Already inflamed, of the next campaign, in the same way as cleanliness, security or traffic? Anne Hidalgo has announced that she would not seek a third term, but it is not certain that she serves her first assistant and heir almost designated, Emmanuel Grégoire. In other words, would she have acted in the same way if she had imagined herself again? We’ll never know. On the other hand, Emmanuel Grégoire hinted that he would have done the same when, several weeks ago, he was trying to convince the mayor that this time, political will could not do anything and that it was necessary to resolve to Announce an unpopular measure.
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