Real estate, environment: the Senate continues to leave its mark on the state budget

The senators continued on Friday the examination of the state budget, enriched with new taxes and exemptions concerning environmental taxation and real estate, including a reduction in inheritance taxes intended to revive a sluggish housing market.

This new tax loophole provides for the exemption of donations of money up to 100,000 euros in favor of a descendant (child, grandchild, nephew or niece), provided that this money is used to build, buy or renovate a home , which he must then undertake to keep for at least three years.

The objective of this system, limited to 2025 and 2026, is to “promote the acquisition of housing in view of the blocked situation in which the real estate market finds itself overall”explained the general budget rapporteur Jean-François Husson (LR).

His amendment was adopted against the advice of the Minister of the Budget, Laurent Saint-Martin, who would have preferred to reduce the number of potential beneficiaries and restrict the measure to the acquisition of new housing, in order to minimize the budgetary cost for the public finances.

Same scenario a little later, when the senators chose to generalize the zero-rate loan to the entire territory, both for new and old housing, when the government only wanted to extend it to new constructions.

The upper house also overrode the minister’s opposition to increase the tax deduction on unfurnished rentals and fundamentally review the taxation of capital gains on real estate sales, in both cases in order to encourage owners to put more goods on the market.

Plastic tax

Engaged in a long discussion about the ” recipes “ of the 2025 draft budget, which should not end until Sunday, the senators also swept away the field of environmental taxation.

They notably decided to apply the property tax to agricultural methane digesters, but also created a tax credit capped at 4,500 euros per farm for the maintenance of hedges.

With the agreement of the executive, the upper house also suspended for 5 to 10 years the tax on polluting activities in the overseas departments, to encourage investments in waste sorting – rather than landfill which is largely favored. For the same purpose, Corsica obtained a provisional rebate until 2029, this time against the advice of the minister.

In the process, the parliamentarians passed a new “eco-contribution” on non-recyclable products, mainly aimed at “consumer plastic products”but also the dishes and “sanitary textiles” such as wipes, diapers or medical sheets.

A new tax of 5 euro cents per “unit placed on the market” was thus adopted, with the aim of drying up the quantities marketed and increasing the State coffers by around 500 million.

This initiative, supported by the right, the centrists and the communists, echoes the increase in VAT on bottled water voted earlier this week, against a backdrop of scandal over the practices of mineral water manufacturers.

Proof that the Senate does not hesitate to increase taxes, after having already raised several levies on capital such as « flat tax » and the« exit tax »and broadened the base of the IFI (real estate wealth tax renamed on this occasion “tax on unproductive wealth”).

A “tax sheet”criticized the boss of the UDR deputies, Éric Ciotti, in a press release on Friday.