The government wants give a little oxygen to all those who have suffered directly from the fires”. A “fire unit” will be put in place within a week at the public finance department, announced the Minister of Public Accounts, Gabriel Attal, in an interview with the Dauphiné liberatedMonday, August 15.
In connection with Urssaf, it will be responsible for setting up “a kind of tax buffer” pour “to limit the economic and financial consequences that the French people concerned will have to suffer” by the fires that have ravaged several French territories since the beginning of the summer. Measures will be planned for individuals, but also for businesses and communities.
For individuals who have seen their property permanently affected, Gabriel Attal already mentions, “mainly three measures” : an exceptional delay in levying income tax, a suspension of local taxes (property tax and housing tax) concerning the damaged dwellings and a potential downward revision of rental values, “depending on the depreciation of the goods”.
On the business side, the minister promised “deferrals of payment of tax deadlines” and an accelerated reimbursement of VAT or CICE credits, “to give a boost to their cash flow”.
Means for civil security
The numerous fires linked to the heat waves that France has been through since June have set a sad record this year: that of the largest surface area of hectares burned, at this stage of the year, since the start of satellite data in 2006. , according to the European Forest Fire Information System (Effis). The latter, however, specifies that the country experienced much worse years in the 1970s, before the European standardized data.
Once the fires have been extinguished, President Emmanuel Macron will bring together all the players from the departments concerned, in order to reflect on the “model of prevention and fight against fires” in France, announced the Elysée on Sunday.
“We will have to learn lessons from what happened and we will change our means of action and anticipation”added, Monday, Mr. Attal, promising “new measures from next summer”. “In addition, we will continue to increase the resources dedicated to firefighting in the next budget”he promised, “with additional credits for civil security”.