MEPs in favor of boosting communities

In the midst of grumbling communities about their resources, MPs voted Wednesday in committee to give them a boost via a revaluation of rental values ​​for the calculation of the housing tax on primary residences in 2020. the draft budget, the Finance Committee adopted amendments LREM and the group Liberties and Territories in favor of a revaluation of 1.009%, the last consumer price index, instead of freezing expected values. These amendments, however, will have to be voted on again in the Chamber next week to be included in the draft budget.

The government will make up for the "near euro"

The revalorization is demanded by associations of mayors and by the delegation to local authorities of the Assembly, which report a reduction of resources of 250 million euros per year in the absence of such a provision. An emblematic measure of the five-year Macron, the gradual reduction in the three-year housing tax (2018-2020) for 80% of the most modest taxpayers was voted in the 2018 Finance Act. The draft budget law (PLF) for 2020 provides that by 2023 no more taxpayer will pay housing tax in respect of his principal residence.

But the removal of this tax, currently the main tax revenue of municipalities, will be offset "to the euro nearly," said the government on several occasions. Concerns, however, remain strong among local elected officials. To compensate for the abolition of the tax, it is planned to draw on the share of revenues from the built land tax which has hitherto been returned to the departments. These will be paid back a portion of the VAT.

A tax on vacant dwellings

The Finance Committee has also adopted a socialist amendment to tax vacant dwellings at the same level as second homes. Indeed, "in areas of housing shortage, with regard to the housing tax, it has become more profitable to leave your home vacant than to occupy it, even in second home," observed the PS group, which wants to remove "deadweight effects". In some large cities, the number of dwellings considered vacant has sometimes increased, along with a decrease in the number of second homes, the year following the introduction or increase of the increase applicable to second homes.