The deduction at source, a priori, everyone sees what it is: the administration assigns you a reference tax number, collects all of your income and expenses, and debits you, each month from your salary, what you owe him.
The “payment at source” on which Emmanuel Macron is working is the opposite. It’s designing a system that would make the State pay back to the taxpayer what he owes you, in respect of social benefits. “Payment at source”: the expression is from a minister who works on the system. This ranges from family allowances to the RSA for example, all without having to run from one counter to another, with files and forms for each administration.
The objective seems clear. And is based on what was done during the five-year term: administrative simplification, the law passed in early January which allows public services to exchange their data more easily. The Council of State worked on the legal architecture to secure these exchanges of information. The last stone to be laid is that of the “social reference income”, a unique identifier with the health and solidarity administration, as is the “tax income” with taxes. “Because of the 15 social benefits that exist in France, not one has the same income scale”, notes a minister.
So we will have to find a method to simplify, unify. And that it works. “The thing has to work technicallyinsists a macronist, that there is no bug the day the button is pressed.”
In the short term, the reform will be expensive, because one of its immediate consequences is the improvement in the rate of recourse to aid, these few billion euros not claimed by the French who are nevertheless entitled to it. Typically, the RSA: a third of eligible households do not take the steps to benefit from it. With the “payment at source”, no more subject: these billions will be disbursed. “But you save 20,000 CAF officials in the long term”, breathes support from Emmanuel Macron. So the cost of the first years is quickly absorbed.
And above all, slips another, it allows to introduce the subject of rights and duties. We hear it a lot in Macronie… If the rights are automatically paid, then the head of state can ask for efforts on homework. Solidarity, for example: working longer, reforming pensions, reforming unemployment insurance. “This amounts to reconciling individual freedom and life in society. summarizes a minister. This is how this new revolution can be “sold” to public opinion.