Thursday, February 23, it was time for self-congratulation for Gabriel Attal: “In 2022, our fight against fraud produced historic results”welcomed the Minister of Public Accounts in The Parisianalongside the publication by Bercy of a complete assessment of the fight against tax, customs and social fraud.
Boasting unprecedented adjustments at all levels, the minister is however going a bit too quickly in the presentation of the results. Because 2022 is not a record year.
Admittedly, the tax authorities last year collected 14.6 billion euros in evaded taxes and penalties, i.e. “1.2 billion euros better than in 2021”, said the minister. But a much higher figure had been reached in 2015, under the five-year term of François Hollande, with 16.3 billion euros collected, as recalled the statistical notebook of Bercy. Asked to explain this inconsistency, the minister’s office did not respond.
A flattering indicator
By highlighting the collection figure, Gabriel Attal leaves aside two other indicators of the effectiveness of tax audits, potentially less flattering.
The first is the amount of taxes “effectively collected” by the Treasury. This remains stable in 2022 compared to 2021, at 10.6 billion euros, and even down slightly compared to 2019 (10.9 billion). This discrepancy is partly explained by a time lag – there is a delay between the time the tax authorities make the collection (the claim procedure), and the time the taxpayers pay their arrears. But it also shows that this amount collected remains partly theoretical, since some taxpayers never pay their tax debt, whether they are insolvent individuals or bankrupt companies. The sums actually collected are therefore ultimately lower.
Another indicator was once favored in government communication: the amount of sums “notified” by the tax authorities, i.e. all arrears and penalties claimed by the administration following the tax adjustments made during the year. This figure has not been communicated since 2018. While it was imperfect, since the sums are sometimes revised downwards after transactions between the tax authorities and taxpayers, it reflected the effectiveness of tax audits more faithfully during the year than the amounts collected. Recovery, which is the final stage, after notification and then any disputes or negotiations, rather reflects the final result of past checks.
“80 to 100 billion euros” of fraud
Whichever indicator is chosen, detected tax evasion is only the tip of the iceberg. “All taxes combined, it is estimated [que la fraude fiscale en France représente] between 80 and 100 billion euros”reacted the general secretary of the Solidaires Finances publiques union, Anne Guyot-Welke, who calls on the government to provide public finance officials with the “technical, legal and human resources” in this fight.
“The tax audit workforce has decreased by more than 4,000 people since 2010, including 1,600 since 2017 (…). These reductions have a real effect on the effectiveness of tax audits, the performance of which drops over a long period”regretted MP LFI Charlotte Leduc in a report published in October 2022.
The fight against social fraud is progressing
1.6 billion euros: this is the total amount of social fraud detected in 2022 by the State and social benefit organizations, according to the results published on February 23 by Bercy, which sees it as the result of “the priority since 2017 in the fight against social fraud”. This figure has increased significantly in recent years, since it stood at 482 million euros in 2011 and 1 billion euros in 2015.
This figure includes:
- Urssaf adjustments for unpaid contributions due to concealed work, at 788 million euros;
- fraud detected by the family allowance funds (CAF), at 351 million euros;
- fraud detected in old-age allowances, at 155 million euros;
- health insurance fraud, at 316 million euros.
This is of course the only fraud detected, part of which remains invisible to the authorities.
If these amounts increase regularly, they remain minimal compared to all social expenditure, which represents hundreds of billions of euros each year.