Income tax break to last until 2017

THE INCOME tax exemption for the least well-off households in France will be maintained until 2017, finance minister Michel Sapin has said.

Mr Sapin said the measure, announced last week by Prime Minister Manuel Valls, was not a one-off deal, but will be written into 2015’s finance bill.

And he told RTL’s Grand Jury show that the promised future tax cuts would come “on top” of this exemption.

“There is a sense of injustice among French people who have had to pay more tax while their incomes have not risen,” he said.

He said that the €1bn cost of the cut had been mostly covered already by penalties imposed on the repatriation of Swiss bank accounts. The amount collected had reached €764m in just four months, he said, and Bercy was in line to collect more than two-and-a-half times the €800m it had predicted.

He insisted the timing of the announcement had nothing to do with the impending European elections.

On Friday, Mr Valls announced that 1.8million French households would be freed from the burden of income tax, while a further 1.2million would enjoy a cut in their payments.

This was an increase on an earlier announcement, in which he said 650,000 households would benefit.

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