Hollande wants tax at source by 2018

PRESIDENT Hollande is pressing ahead with plans to deduct French income tax at source, setting a timetable for the measure to be fully up and running by 2018.

In an interview this week for Sud Ouest newspaper, he said the reform "could not be achieved in less than three years" and the first steps towards the change would begin in 2016.

He said tax at source should not "complicate the lives of business-owners" and would make an individual's tax situation simpler.

Critics of the reform fear it could lead to a year when households are paying last year's tax burden and having this year's deducted at source at the same time.

Hollande said: "We guarantee that no one will lose out" - without going into further details about how this would be applied.

France's Socialist government has been looking at ways to improve the country's tax system, which former prime-minister Jean-Marc Ayrault described in 2013 as "incomprehensible and illegible".