This is another setback for the government. After the measure on the “super-dividends”, voted on Wednesday, the Assembly positioned itself again against the opinion of the executive. As part of the first reading of the 2023 budget, MEPs voted to restore the initial version of the “exit tax”. A measure which concerns the tax exit of entrepreneurs.
The amendment Les Républicains, supported by 155 votes against 133, restores a tax on the “latent capital gains” of company directors who decide to transfer their tax domicile abroad, in the event of the effective transfer of their assets in France, within 15 years after their departure.
A reformed tax during Macron’s first five-year term
Set up in 2011 by Nicolas Sarkozy, then head of state, the “exit tax” had been reformed during Emmanuel Macron’s first five-year term. In an interview with Forbes magazine in 2018, he explained that this tax sent “a negative message to entrepreneurs in France, more than to investors”.
He continued: “Why? Because it implies that beyond a certain threshold, you will be penalized if you leave the country. And this is a big problem for our own start-ups, because most of them, considering France less attractive than abroad, have decided to start from scratch from abroad just to escape this tax”.
The measure was then partially removed, lightened, from January 1, 2019. Since this reform, “the system is no longer effective”, argued the group Les Républicains.
“We must draw the consequences”, says Marine Le Pen
“For three years our country has again been the most attractive in Europe for foreign investment. There is a positive impact to these reforms”, defended for his part Gabriel Attal, the Minister of Public Accounts Gabriel Attal. He called for “not breaking something that works”. MoDem deputy Mohamed Laqhila also asked in vain not to send a “bad message” to entrepreneurs, like the elected representative of French people living abroad Stéphane Vojetta, from the Renaissance group.
Favorable to the restoration of the “exit tax”, the leader of the Rassemblent national deputies, Marine Le Pen, called for “the assessment of the runoff: it did not work”. “We have to draw the consequences. And change the policy that has been carried out, ”according to her.
The left welcomed: “It is an amendment which gives all its meaning to this tax”, according to the socialist Philippe Brun. “Once again the government is largely in the minority,” welcomed the Insoumis chairman of the Finance Committee Éric Coquerel.