According to Minister of Public Action and Accounts Gabriel Attal, the French government intends to strengthen taxation controls and enhance penalties for tax evasion, with a renewed emphasis on tackling massive fraud.
The minister stated that the number of inspections of the country’s largest enterprises would be boosted by 25% by the end of Emmanuel Macron’s second presidential term in 2027.
According to Attal, the efforts will concentrate on the “high end of the spectrum, on the biggest scams, the most complex ones, and those that frequently involve international involvement.”
“We intend to pile pressure on the super-rich and multinational corporations, relieving pressure on the middle classes and small business owners,” he said on France Inter radio on Tuesday. “The vast majority of French people who work and pay taxes are victims of this fraud.”
Attal also emphasized the need to “relieve the pressure on small taxpayers” by simplifying the disclosure method and introducing “an automatic penalty waiver for the first error.” He also promised to introduce “an automatic reverse of penalty” in favor of taxpayers in the event of a government blunder.
The country’s authorities are likely to perform tax audits of the 100 largest businesses on the stock exchange every other year as part of the plan, as no set frequency of such inspections for French corporate heavyweights has been created.
By 2027, the ministry intends to hire 1,500 additional workers to handle the increased number of tax audits. Furthermore, a new tax intelligence service will be established under the Ministry of Economy and Finance, with a hundred “elite agents” hired to combat significant tax fraud on a global scale.
According to the most recent data released by French authorities, anti-tax fraud measures have assisted in claiming a return to the government of €14.6 billion (almost $16 billion), an increase of 8.2% over 2021.
