What do Coquerel and Courson propose in their tax bill to make up for the lack of a 2025 budget?

2024-12-17 07:09:00

CThis will be the priority from the beginning of the new year. The National Assembly adopted, on Monday 16 December, the special law which specifically authorizes the executive to collect taxes in the absence of a budget. The text, presented in reaction to Michel Barnier’s censorship, was approved by all 481 voting deputies. Insoumis MPs abstained, however, regretting the rejection of their amendments aimed at indexing the income tax scale to inflation. The latter were declared inadmissible by the president of the Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet.

Because if this constitutional crutch allows the State to guarantee the continuity of public services, the opposition deputies have proposed in particular to index the income tax scale, to avoid increases for taxpayers next year. Without indexation, “380,000 new families” could find themselves subject to taxation next year, and “just over 17 million of them” would suffer an increase in this tax, according to the outgoing Budget Minister Laurent Saint-Martin.

“Urgent” and “consensual” measures.

The situation could be corrected in the 2025 budget, but this could only happen in several months. Based on this observation, the general budget rapporteur Charles de Courson (Liot) and the president of the Finance Committee Éric Coquerel (LFI) sent a mail to François Bayrou to prepare a tax bill “in the collective interest”, integrating “urgent” measures and obtaining “consensus”. In fact, due to budget shortfalls, many tax provisions cannot be renewed until January 1, 2025.

“If this law guarantees continuity, the fact remains that some segments of the population or some sectors of activity require rapid measures, which could be resolved, starting from January, through a dedicated tax law”, underlined Éric Coquerel from the podium of the Assembly Tuesday.

In particular, they are targeting “the extension of taxes and tax credits” expiring on December 31st, “the fiscal and social exemption of tips […]the indexation of income tax to inflation, the extension of zero-interest loans” and some “provisions in favor of farmers”. They ask that a bill including these measures be discussed “as soon as work resumes” in the Assembly on 13 January.