Real estate purchase: this new tax voted by the Assembly will increase notary fees

The National Assembly adopted an amendment to the draft budget for 2025 creating a new tax within the transfer duties for onerous title, one of the components of notary fees. Its objective: to finance the fight against coastal erosion which threatens many homes on the coasts.

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When you present your purchasing project to a real estate agent and when the crucial question of the budget arrives, he inevitably asks you for this clarification: “250,000 euros, with or without notary fees?”. An important clarification because the transfer rights for valuable consideration (DMTO), incorrectly called “notary fees” insofar as they are mainly made up of local and national taxes, represent no less than 7 to 8% of the purchase price in old buildings, and 2 to 3% in new buildings. Ranges likely to increase further after the adoption, by the National Assembly, in session, Friday, November 8, of a amendment to the finance bill for 2025.

Supported by Gironde MP Sophie Panonacle (Together for the Republic), this amendment creates “an additional tax on DMTOs” to finance actions to preventcoastal erosion. The consequences of recession of the coastlinea phenomenon amplified by climate change, were symbolized in early 2023 by the destruction of the “Le Signal” building, located on the beachfront in Soulac-sur-Mer, in Gironde. This building, built in 1967 200 meters from the ocean, was only about twenty meters from the waves at the time of its demolition.

A tax of around twenty euros

This additional tax is “very limited, it does not affect the buyers’ budget”reassures Sophie Panonacle in the statement of reasons for her amendment. It would in fact amount to ten euros per 100,000 euros. In our example of a property purchase of 250,000 euros, this tax would represent an additional cost of only 20 euros for the buyer. The MP nonetheless expects a revenue of the order of 30 million euros per yearwhich would be allocated to a coastal erosion fund created in the “expenditure” section of the 2025 finance bill.

This fund will finance land acquisition, protection and relocation projects of real estate. According to the Center for Studies and Expertise on Risks, Environment, Mobility and Development (Cerema), it will indeed be necessary to spend 240 million euros to protect a thousand buildings from coastal erosion by 2028. Gold “this predictable natural phenomenon is not included in the list of major natural risks, the Barnier fund (used for example to prevent floods, editor’s note) cannot be mobilized to finance protection and compensation actions” of the decline of the coastline, regrets Sophie Panonacle.

Another tax, on “Airbnb” platforms

The fact remains that this tax project, already adopted by the National Assembly in 2022, was swept away by the government’s recourse to 49.3, which allows it to do without a vote in Parliament. A scenario likely to recur for the PLF 2025, submitted this Tuesday, November 12 to the solemn vote of the deputies, Sophie Panonacle’s amendment having been adopted against the advice of the government. Just like a second amendment of the MP, which creates a tax on the operators of short-term tourist rental platforms, such as Airbnb and Abritel, to finance, again, prevention against coastal erosion.

“We know the significant profits (that these platforms) make when their only activity consists of connecting a host and a passing tenant. The commissions received, generally 15 to 20% depending on the platforms, generate a considerable turnover, estimated at 18 billion euros per year. This tax, amounting to 1%, would therefore bring in around 180 million to the State, which could transfer it to the new coastal erosion fund.explains Sophie Panonacle.