"The roots of France's budgetary problems are to be found beyond our borders, in the failure of an international tax system that is at the end of its tether."

With the government confirming a new round of brutal budgetary austerity, the French budgetary equation seems insoluble once again this year. An equation with familiar contours: a continued decline in tax revenues, a structural public deficit, and an exploding public debt. And always the same solution: massive budget cuts, of more than €40 billion this year , weakening public services and widening inequalities at an unprecedented rate, to the detriment of the middle and working classes, without any real budgetary efficiency.

If these ineffective solutions are repeated from one budget to the next, it is also because a key part of the problem is ignored: the profound failure of the international tax system. However, to understand the French budget crisis, we must look at the conjunction of two dynamics: one national, the other international, which profoundly weaken French fiscal sovereignty.

On the one hand, national tax choices , which have eroded the progressivity of our tax system – abolition of the solidarity tax on wealth, reduction of corporate tax, repeated tax gifts to the most privileged – which seriously deprive France of essential tax resources, particularly since 2017.

On the other hand, deregulated financial globalization has encouraged unbridled tax competition between states, generalized the mobility of capital in a highly opaque manner, and favored massive tax evasion by multinationals and the richest individuals, at the cost of an immense financial drain of nearly 500 billion dollars worldwide, including nearly 33 billion for France.

The roots of France's fiscal woes are therefore also to be found beyond our borders, in the failure of an international tax system that is running out of steam and incapable of adapting to a globalized, financialized, and digitalized economy. A system that for too long has favored financial opacity, benefiting tax havens where 40% of multinational profits are transferred each year, and where the ultra-rich hide offshore wealth equivalent to 10% of global gross domestic product.

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