Housing tax: will you have to pay the “citizen contribution” which could replace it?

The Minister of Territories will open a consultation with local elected officials at the beginning of 2025 to consider the creation of a “citizen contribution to public service”. Who would pay it, between owner and tenant? Would it be based on income or rental values?

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No return as such of the housing tax on main residences but, instead, the probable creation of a “citizen contribution to public service”. The Minister of Partnership with the Territories, Catherine Vautrin, confirmed on November 20 that, “if there is no question of coming back” on the abolition, since 2023, of the housing tax, “Citizens must, however, take charge of public action in the territories, nothing being free”.

While awaiting the conclusions of the consultation that the minister must open at the beginning of 2025 on the subject with local elected officials, the latter compete in imagination on the form that this contribution could take. At the beginning of November, Michel Fournier, president of the Association of Rural Mayors of France and mayor of Voivres (Vosges), called, on Franceinfo, to think about “a contribution based on income» of citizens and no longer on the rental values ​​of housing, as was the case for the housing tax.

A contribution based on residents’ income?

An unfair method of calculation, at the origin of the abolition of the housing tax, because the rental values ​​having not been revised for around fifty years, the occupants – owners or tenants – of old housing paid a tax residential three to four times lower to that paid by the occupants of more recent properties. This idea of ​​a “housing tax” based on income had emerged in the 1990s and almost materialized in a bill “containing various economic and financial provisions”. But the Prime Minister at the time, Pierre Bérégovoy, was opposed to it, due to the unpopularity of this measure.

Like Michel Fournier, who considers it essential that “everyone, whatever their situation, participates in the life of their community” through such a contribution, David Lisnard, president of the Association of Mayors of France and mayor of Cannes, proposes the establishment of a “residential contribution universal». “Today, around half of the inhabitants no longer pay local tax. The other half is made up of owners who pay the property tax and the housing tax on second homes. We must recreate a system of local responsibility and involve citizens in the management of the municipality, explaining to them the real cost of the public services from which they benefit as users. They will understand that free does not exist»he argued on the “Mayors of France” website on November 14. Note that the AMF advocates a reduction in this universal residential contribution for non-taxable people, who would therefore not have to pay it at all or in small proportions.

A tax for tenants only?

The AMF’s suggestion is reminiscent of that of the National Union of Real Estate Owners (Unpi), a supporter of the creation of a “user tax” who would be paid by all the inhabitants of a given municipality, whether they are owners or tenantsas was the case for the old housing tax. However, its amount would be “adjustable” based on certain criteria, notably income.

No universal contribution, on the other hand, for Camille Galtier. The mayor of Manosque pleads for a “rental tax». As its name suggests, it would only concern tenants and, more precisely, those with income “sufficient” to pay for it. “We see that some owners live below the poverty line and have to pay property tax, while tenants with wealthy incomes do not pay taxes in the locality where they live,” he explained to France Bleu on October 21. So many ideas to inject into the consultation that Catherine Vautrin will open with local elected officials at the start of next year.