There will ultimately be no question of “value sharing” during the budget debates in the Senate, which opened on Thursday, November 17. In any case not on the benches of the presidential party. The tabling of an amendment to the finance bill (PLF) 2023 on the subject, which was still holding the rope a few days ago to respond to Emmanuel Macron’s wish to set up an “employee dividend”, promise of campaign of the Head of State, was finally abandoned.
The MEP Pascal Canfin, responsible within the Renaissance party for relations with the government, had however been mandated on the subject of “super dividends”. He had worked on a mechanism of “superparticipation” supposed to make it possible to distribute more to employees in companies having made exceptional profits. One way to respond to demands for a better sharing of value, without crossing the government’s red line: taxing businesses more.
A politically inflammable subject
It was counting without the opposition of Bercy. “The social partners are currently discussing it. We will see after their proposals », sweep the cabinet from the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, in reference to the negotiations on “the sharing of value in companies”, which opened last week under the aegis of the Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt.
In a context of soaring inflation and multiplication of wage demands, the subject nevertheless remains politically inflammable. It is often compared to the “superprofits” made by multinationals thanks to the crisis. During the examination of the PLF at first reading in the National Assembly, an amendment by the leader of the MoDem deputies, Jean-Paul Mattei, proposing an increased taxation of “superdividends”, had been voted by 19 Renaissance deputies, before d to be swept away by the 49.3.
At the initiative of Mr. Mattei, and despite the government’s dismissal, a “reformatted” version – threshold raised so as not to affect medium-sized companies (ETI), but holding companies included – of the amendment was eventually tabled in the Senate by several centrist senators. “I intend to continue to carry this subject”, says the deputy to the Monde.
At Bercy, we prefer to recall that the existing mechanisms – such as profit-sharing and participation, or the Macron bonus – have already been relaxed several times, including in the law on purchasing power, passed this summer. So that the subject today relates less to large groups, whose employees already benefit from compulsory participation (from 50 people), than to VSEs-SMEs. In addition, we are assured, the amendment prepared by Mr. Canfin could not have been constitutionally accepted in the PLF: he would have been seen as a “budget rider” because participation comes under the labor code, not a tax provision.
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