Income tax: will you pay more in 2025 if the motion of censure is adopted?

Censorship from the government would have the consequence of suspending the examination of the state budget for 2025. And of temporarily blocking the indexation of the tax scale brackets provided for in the text. But your tax bill shouldn’t increase that much.

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Will government censorship cause your income tax to go up next year? That’s certain, according to the Minister of Budget and Public Accounts, Laurent Saint-Martin. In case of censorship, “we are automatically bringing 380,000 additional French households into income tax because the scale will not have kept up with inflation and 17 million households will also pay more”affirmed the tenant of Bercy in the columns of Le Parisien, on November 30. For what ? Because the finance bill (PLF) for 2025 provides in article 2 for an indexation of brackets of the income tax scale on the annual price increase excluding tobacco in 2024, estimated at 2% by the government. A measure provided for each year in the state budget in order not to increase the tax bill for taxpayers whose income has not increased more than inflation. And which also allows certain households to remain tax-free.

Gold without budgetno indexation of the tax scale brackets is possible. “If there is no more government and no more budget, there are no more measures increasing taxes on the richest, such as the creation of the differential contribution on high incomes. And more indexation of the brackets of the income tax scale. Some who did not pay income tax will therefore enter the scaleconfirms economist François Ecalle, founder of the Fipeco association. But this is a hypothetical scenario.nuances the expert.

Retroactive indexing of tax brackets

Because there is no question of removing the increase in the thresholds of the different brackets of the tax scale and, consequently, of hitting taxpayers in the wallet with a bill that would climb by several hundred euros. First of all, once the next government is appointed, it can request “urgently to Parliament the authorization to collect taxes”, specifies article 47 of the Constitution, and submit before December 19 a special finance bill to this effect. “Once this special law is adopted, you will resume the same revenues and expenses as in 2024”specifies constitutionalist Benjamin Morel, lecturer at the University of Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas.

Certainly, as long as a budget for 2025 is not passed, the rules planned for 2024 continue and the income tax scale does not change, with the specter of a tax increase for all taxpayers. . “But the vote on a special law does not exempt us from voting on a budget in the first months of 2025”assures the expert. It is then up to the future government to have an initial finance law adopted by Parliament. Namely the budget debated this fall and put on hold by an adoption of the motion of censure in the National Assembly, Wednesday November 4, i.e. within the framework of a new law. In any case, this budget will unsurprisingly include the classic indexing of scale brackets inflation tax. And even adopted in 2025, “it can be applied retroactively”assures the specialist. Don’t panic, therefore, taxpayers will not be the collateral damage of government censorship.