The Court of Auditors calls for more clarity on property taxes

With a return of 35,3 billion euros in 2021, property taxes on built and unbuilt properties are "a pillar of local taxation", recall the financial magistrates in "definitive observations".

Applied to nearly one in two French people, property taxes are characterized by "the complexity of calculating their base, based on old cadastral rental values ​​and marked by numerous abatement and exemption systems", they add. .

"The establishment of the amount of property taxes has long been based on parameters determined from rental market conditions dating from 1961 for unbuilt properties and 1970 for built properties", regrets the institution of rue Cambon.

An update of the rental values ​​of professional premises has indeed taken place, but the update of these values ​​disconnected from the current rental market is still pending for residential and industrial premises.

A delay which “weakens the foundations of property taxes and harms the fair treatment of taxpayers”, judges the Court.

Before starting to update the rental values ​​of the 52,6 million residential premises in France, the financial magistrates suggest "drawing up in the short term an assessment of the review carried out on the professional premises, in order to draw teachings".

More generally, they call on the State to prepare this update in partnership with local authorities, "to enable them to measure (its) impact on their property tax revenues".

Still with a view to transparency, the Court of Auditors recommends "providing local decision-makers with precise statistical information on the nature of taxpayers subject to property taxes in their municipality (individuals, businesses, etc.)" and "publishing the annual report on the cost of the exemption and reduction measures for direct local taxes provided for" in the finance law for 2017.

If it is "on the rise", the cost of the "numerous" allowances, exemptions and reductions is "difficult to reconstruct and the monitoring of the number of beneficiaries concerned is proving to be deficient", deplores the Court, which figures the bill for abatements alone at 2 billion euros for the State in 2021, against 113 million euros in 2016.