For the Minister Delegate for Public Accounts, without this measure, “a single person who works at the minimum wage (…). would return to the tax, whereas it does not pay it today”.
Every measure has a cost. Faced with the inflationary surge which would be 5.2% for the year 2022 according to Bercy’s latest estimate, the government had taken a whole range of measures at the start of the summer. Among the latter, the full indexation of the income tax scale to inflation. This means that the amounts from which a taxpayer moves from one tax bracket to another are reassessed in the spring of 2023. With a view to the 2023 budget, the executive has therefore opted for an increase in the latter by 5, 3%. A sharp increase compared to that of 2022, which was around 1.4%. The measure, which will be included in the finance bill – presented next Monday – has a cost for public finances, which was revealed on Wednesday by the Minister Delegate for Public Accounts.
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Guest of CNews on Wednesday morning, Gabriel Attal clarified that this modification represents “6.2 billion euros in income tax cuts for the French“. A non-rise in taxation, more exactly. “The income tax scale is raised to the same level as inflation. (…) For a single person who works at the minimum wage, if we did not do that, she would return to the tax, whereas she does not pay it today, and she would pay around 130 eurosadded the Minister Delegate for Public Accounts. Before illustrating his words further: “A single person who earns 2500 euros, whose salary has not increased” will have a tax cut «from 328 euros» per year. According to him, there are Frenchwho have seen their salaries increase» : «If you don’t raise the income tax scale, it becomes a tax increase.»
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Cost for public finances
At the beginning of June, the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire had already indicated that«il (was) out of the question that employees, French people pay more income tax with inflation”. Without this revaluation of the tax brackets, many French people who did not pay taxes until now would therefore have been taxable. In other words, the government prefers to impose this cost on public finances rather than to charge the French, whose incomes have progressed less rapidly than prices throughout recent months.