Cohabiting couples in France should be taxed the same way as married couples. That is one of the reforms president Macron wants after his re-election.
Currently running for re-election in April, the French president announced these reforms at a four-hour long press conference on Thursday. Facing 250 journalists, he shared his views and plans for the next five years.
The current tax system is a concept that is no longer adapted to society”, explains a Macron campaign executive to French daily Le Parisien. According to the executive, the extension of ‘household tax' to unmarried couples and so-called non-pacsés, people not necessarily in a relationship living together.
With a measure like this, Le Parisien writes, Emmanuel Macron can lift the purchasing power of up to 8 million people. In France, one in five couples would live in a free union. People who live together could therefore benefit from the marital quotient, which makes it possible to take into account the marital structure of a tax household and to lower its tax rate in the event of income disparity. “It will generate a gain in purchasing power for those who wish to declare their taxes together”, say people around Macron. In general, a French household tax drops by 12 per cent when they pool their declaration.
According to the French business magazine Capital, purchasing power is one of the main themes in the presidential elections, especially with the war in Ukraine and the consequences of the health crisis. Macron, therefore, announced taxation reforms earlier as well, with the reduction of inheritance taxes.
