The Court of Auditors wants to strengthen tax controls on real estate wealth

The IFI, which has replaced the wealth solidarity tax (ISF) since 2018, "is collected effectively (...) but control actions must be strengthened and the risks of fraud better identified", believes the First President of the Court of Auditors Pierre Moscovici.

The checks are currently "few": they concerned "less than 2% of those liable" in 2022, still making it possible to recover 100 million euros in reminders that same year.

To accentuate them, the Court of Auditors wants the tax administration to rely more on “artificial intelligence” and “the exploitation of an increasingly large number of data”.

Controls based on data, particularly from land transactions, are already carried out by the tax administration, but could be generalized to all taxpayers, suggests the Court.

“The tax administration notably lacks information to control assets held via real estate companies (SCI), while these methods (...) are developing strongly,” details the report.

If the Court of Auditors recognizes that "the financial return of the control is limited compared to other taxes", it considers "that it is nevertheless important to ensure that the dissuasive effect of the controls is maintained by ensuring good coverage of the taxpayers concerned ."

Emmanuel Macron's electoral promise in 2017, the IFI, introduced in 2018, refocused the ISF base on only real estate assets whose net value exceeds 1,3 million euros. In 2022, nearly 164.000 households were subject to it.

According to an annex to the finance bill, the IFI would increase by 49 million euros in 2024 and would thus generate 2,44 billion euros in revenue, or roughly half of what the IFI reported. 'ISF at the time of its deletion.

Illustrative image of the article via Depositphotos.com.