France will carry out checks every two years on the largest listed companies to fight tax fraud

France wants to strengthen the fight against tax fraud by large fortunes and multinationals. The French Government's economic team has presented on Tuesday the main measures of its plan to combat these crimes, including a 25% increase in tax controls for large wealth by 2027, the year in which the mandate of the president, Emmanuel Macron.

Fiscal controls will also be carried out every two years for the 100 companies with the highest capitalization and the sanctions for the most serious irregularities will be tougher.. The idea of the plan is to give “more means and more sanctions, to have more results”, said Gabriel Attal, delegated minister of Public Accounts, during the presentation of the package on Tuesday.

The minister stressed that the objective is to prosecute the “most elaborate and technical frauds, especially in the international arena”. “There is a gray area, that of the so-called tax optimization, which allows some, especially internationals, to evade taxes,” said Attal, who added that the concealment of assets abroad will also be pursued.

Tax fraud involves losses of tens of billions of euros, they can range from 30,000 million to 100,000, according to the minister, who admits that it is difficult to quantify the figures.

Less pressure on the middle class

The Government wants with this plan to “relieve the burden on the middle classes and the entrepreneurs of small and medium-sized companies”, according to Attal.. This will be achieved by “promoting massive regularizations instead of resorting to controls” and establishing an automatic reverse sanction in favor of the taxpayer in the event of an administrative error.

In France, there are 10% of taxpayers who pay 70% income tax, so that, according to Attal, it is one of the countries in Europe that taxes large fortunes the most.

In this way and with this speech, the Government tries to soften the discontent that exists in the country after the approval of the pension reform, which delays the retirement age to 64 years and that the Government has justified with economic arguments, due to the need to prevent the system from going into deficit. In France, there are those who think that this effort should be made by the richest, through an extra tax on large fortunes..

The troops assigned to fight against these tax crimes will increase by 15% between now and the end of the mandate, with 1,500 additional agents. In total, 10 million euros will be invested to make this fight “a priority”.

A new tax intelligence service will be created, with a hundred “elite agents”, which will be dedicated to the fight against major international frauds. Controls will also be strengthened in customs. To combat financial opacity, France will “take the lead at the international level to promote transparency” through the exchange of information between EU member states.