Taxes: home tutoring assistance could be capped

If the budget debates in July were only a taste of those in the fall, the exchanges will be “bloody”, predict some elected officials. The games could start on Tuesday, in the Finance Committee of the Assembly, the first point of passage of the finance bill for 2023. On the menu, no less than 1,443 amendments, i.e. a fairly unprecedented level for a first part of the text, dedicated to recipes. The discussion is in particular likely to escalate on the subject of the abolition of taxes on production or the taxation of “superprofits”.

Certain less burning subjects could however make the majority and the left agree. This is the case of a few measures targeting tax loopholes, identified by the commission led by MP Daniel Labaronne (Renaissance), charged by Bercy with proposing ways to save money. The bill prepared by the Ministry of the Economy is, in fact, poor in this area.

Tutoring

The majority deputy tabled an amendment to establish a ceiling of 1,000 euros maximum for home tutoring expenses or home tuition giving entitlement to the personal service tax credit. Objective: to align the device with the caps already provided for three activities eligible for the tax credit, namely small DIY work, home computer assistance and small gardening work.

“1,000 euros corresponds to 20 euros of private lessons per week, which seems a more than reasonable amount to encourage the declaration without creating windfall effects for the wealthiest households who make extensive use of home lessons”, explains Daniel The Baroness.

Tax credit

Personal services tax credits are usually granted without income conditions and represent 50% of expenses incurred, up to an annual limit of 12,000 euros. A system decried by PS MP Christine Pirès-Beaune, who asked last year for information on the allocation of this tax credit, which costs nearly 5 billion per year.

His request, repeated this year, is supported by the majority. Daniel Labaronne recalls that “the promised information is still not available to parliamentarians” and therefore recommends that the nature of the activity be indicated in the tax declaration form. “A better assessment of this tax benefit would make it possible to revise the relevance of the eligible services, the level of coverage and the ceilings in force. »

In the same vein, an amendment tabled with Charles Sitzenstuhl and Mathieu Lefèvre (Renaissance), proposes “limiting part of the tax expenditure for supporting businesses, exemptions and reduced rates on taxes on the consumption of energy products (TICPE) as well as cultural tax credits which are not yet available”.

10% workforce reduction

To give a “green” color to the proposals of the Labaronne mission, the amendment specifies that in the case of tax expenditures unfavorable to the climate such as the reduced tariffs of TICPE (domestic tax on the consumption of energy products), this demarcation is “also an incentive mechanism to encourage the transformation of these tax loopholes into support measures for the transition of the sectors concerned”. An amendment to remove exemptions from domestic consumption tax that are not justified by a European directive, in particular certain exemptions on coal for companies, also goes in this direction.

More explosive, an amendment by the three deputies in charge of “cost hunting” pleads for a 10% reduction in the workforce of state operators and its agencies by 2027, via the non-renewal of a departure from retirement in two. The idea is to set a downward trajectory over the five-year period. Who will be targeted? Pôle emploi, Météo France, the CNRS, Inserm, the State participation agency? The only certainty, after years of hemorrhage, the National Forestry Office (ONF) should be spared, promised the government.