Inherit, a poison?

By wetretrjyu
01/06/2022
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CHRONIQUE. Les écarts de patrimoines, bien supérieurs à ceux de revenus, ne cessent d’enfler, et atteignent des proportions inédites, qui creusent la désunion de la communauté et la fragmentation de la société. Inégalité naturelle ou injustice insupportable ? A chacun d’arbitrer, selon sa considération de l’héritage. Considération, c’est-à-dire légitimité et sens d’un dispositif séculaire qui distingue les « biens-nés » des autres, qui détermine dès le plus jeune âge une partie de la destinée – et qui réduit le legs à une réalité exclusivement matérielle, lui que désigne en priorité l’éducation affective, intellectuelle, morale, éthique, artistique, in fine émancipatrice. La série que le Monde a consacrée cet été au processus de succession dans quelques grandes dynasties industrielles françaises est, à ces titres, éloquente. Emmanuel Macron en 2017 avait promis « le risque plutôt que la rente » ; il a échoué. La Présidentielle 2022 permettra-t-elle un débat fiscal de fond et de justice, et notamment la révision d’un impôt sur les successions aujourd’hui obsolète ? (*) Par Denis Lafay, journaliste, conseiller éditorial de La Tribune et directeur de collection chez L'Aube. Denis Lafay (*)

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Tasty. Fascinating. But also which arouses embarrassment and discomfort. These are the impressions that emerge on reading the summer series that the world, under the pen of Raphaëlle Bacqué and Vanessa Schneider, devoted to the conditions in which the patriarchs of some large French industrial dynasties prepare and model their succession. The intimacy of the Bolloré, Arnault, Pinault, Mulliez, Lagardère, Bouygues families is examined, which reveals golden lives, envied trajectories and undoubtedly even jealous, but also unfulfilled requirements, irreparable disillusions, heavy emotional abandonments, deaf rivalries, elusive alienation. Money makes and defeated happiness: thus one might summarize the feeling that inspires this immersion in the education and transmission mechanisms called to leather the empires which are - or, for Lagardère, have been - flagships of the 'French industry. Vincent Bolloré picking up in the street the clothes her son Yannick threw windows from their property located in Villa Montmorency after he learned that his father bathed with his aunt; His other son Sébastien "fleeing the family husband" in his majority, direction Los Angeles. Arnaud Lagardère in the beginnings of adolescence "separated" almost definitively from his mother after Father Jean-Luc discovered his wife's adultery. Bernard Arnault's obsession so that his children joined the Polytechnic School - from which he came - to the point that the prestigious diploma obtained "only" by Frédéric may decide the identity of the successor. Conflicts in siblings, and also the weight, even the emotional and moral burden exerted by the entrepreneurial heritage. "I did not arrive at her ankle, I still do not arrive at her ankle, but we never arrive at the ankle of his idols," concedes Arnaud Lagardère, in a pathetic portrait titled total liquidation before inventory. But even more, we are seized of a certain discomfort in the subtle exhibition of this display of power and power, to these endogamic logics and to this consanguinity of the elites - same resorts, same great schools, same leisure, and even Codes - which symbolize fossilization, inequalities and even the injustices of French society. And in response to which few parades seem to be able to act. The subject of transmission conditions is complex and sensitive. How to break the spiral of castes reproduction, how to break the unjust privilege of rent, how to restore the value of merit, without damaging the industrial tool? How to distinguish questionable personal heritage from the precious entrepreneurial heritage? And in filigree: how to treat the subject, taboo in France, of the inheritance with the tax?

Fate

Yes, this subject is taboo, and to be convinced, it is enough to appreciate the degree of unpopularity of the successions tax - including, as studies indicate, within the least favored social groups -: 76% of French people believe it "unfair". He is taboo, while he highlights an unbearable inequality, and even the most unfair of injustices: that of birth. What would have been childhood, studies, the future prospects of Yannick, Arnaud, Alexandre, François-Henri if they were born Dupont or Gimenez rather than Bolloré, Lagardère, Arnault and Pinault? The answer is clear. Limpid and, symbolically, crucial: the blow of fate, thanks to which these few well-feared children and because of which the vast majority of children less well or badly born are determined from birth, should no longer hold. Above all, as the work of Thomas Piketty, Gabriel Zucman, and the remarkable ad hoc study attest to this attest to the heritage dynasties, invent the heritage throughout life ") produced in February 2021 by general interest, The factory of the alternative, which the differences have been reaching, for the past twenty years, an unprecedented scale.

Heritage inequalities inexorably grow

Indeed, heritage inequalities had declined greatly after the two world wars, but they have continued to swell since the last decade of the 20th century. They are much more dug than those of income: the 10% higher income is six times higher than the lowest 10%, but the same comparison assigned to heritage reveals a difference two hundred and eleven times higher. In 2018, the 10% of households claiming the most important heritage (that is to say that have more than 607,700 euros in gross heritage) hold almost half of all heritage assets. Above all: the enrichment of the rich by the heritage (and the capital) benefits from a multiplier amplification lever - thanks to the abundance of abatement possibilities, the performance of the best tax advisers, the unreason and the 'irrationality of the speculative market, and to the progressive shift in the taxation of donations. According to INSEE, the share of inheritance in French private heritage jumped from 60 to 250 billion euros between 1980 and 2015. In the United States, when at the threshold of the eighties, the marginal tranche d 'Taxation culminated at 80%, the country, its pushing population, and were the whole nation to be complained? The company was better than under the Trump era, author of reforms authorizing a couple to transmit $ 22 million without paying inheritance tax ...

Emmanuel Macron's failure

By what miracle does the most unacceptable inequality escape popular vindictive? When he was presidential candidate in 2017, Emmanuel Macron had promised it: he was going to revalue "the risk" to the detriment of "the annuity". This in the name of the rehabilitation of merit, of the fight against birth injustices. Finally in the name, supported "even on the right", of a liberal culture which rewards individuality in its action to risk, to build, to accomplish, to succeed "by itself". Four years later it is not. And the "show" offered by large entrepreneurial dynasties at the time of the COVVI-19 crisis does not have the observation. On the contrary. The heritage is, more than ever, the first source of wealth. The tax, cog of justice, the foundation of the company, cement of living together, must it be redesigned in the light of successions-applied to the latter, it generates "only" 15 billion euros per year, Far from the 70 billion income taxation, the 115 billion CSGs and the 129 billion VAT? "It is essential that an overall reform of taxation occupies a central place in the presidential campaign 2022 and, more broadly, in the public debate," said the secretary general of the CFDT Laurent Berger in a book to be published in early October ("What company we want?", Dawn). Capital to repair a company that the extent and worsening of inequalities have disunited, fractured, divided and bruised. Capital to reconcile the social body and take it to a shared destiny.

Fear and temptation

Hériter, un poison ?

But who will dare to attack it? Because there are many obstacles or adversaries, and the most formidable resistance or the most devious pitfalls are not settled by law. The indulgence of the population for the perverse mechanisms of heritage reflects fear and temptation: the fear of others, the unknown, uncertainty, human adventure; The temptation of withdrawal, refuge, partitioning, status quo. The disinterest of public opinion and the political areopage for successions tax perhaps also means the ignorance of the attributes of a reform which would be ambitious; A large -scale contribution would generate a windfall that could, and even should benefit the taxation of work. What would be more equitable and empowering than to lighten the tax on the work of the amount of revenues secreted by the tax on annuities - those resulting from the inheritance but also those, speculative, of capital? This would be a strong message in favor of "work value", which since the AUBRY law on the 35 hours has been the subject of harsh debate.

The meaning of what we bequeathed

But the dike on which the hopes of reform collide is above all philosophical.And it comes down to the answers that each mother, each father assigns to "the" question: for what ends I intended for the arrival then the education of my children?And, consubstantially, what designs do I reach my professional adventure, investments and goods acquired during my "passage"?

To question the taxation of the succession is to investigate the nature and the very meaning of what we bequeathed to its descendants.In an ultra-materialist time, mega-marchande and to become uncertain, give-during his lifetime or his death-the fruit of his work (and the fruiting of the heritage that we have perceived yourself)seems, for many, cardinal.This legacy appears in any as the coronation of his own trajectory, proof of his own accomplishment.Sometimes also the brilliance of his omnipotence, his omniscience, his authority, his "generosity".Under these conditions, how to "dare"-we tax such a "work"?

Capital against capital

This prism of narcissistic excesses - which however claims to be respected, especially when it results from a bumpy and valiant route - summons what is included in the definition and the substrate of education. Indeed, what does it mean to raise? Make it grow, and rather the individualization capacities of your children than their bank account or their material comfort. Sonish their development, their autonomy, their emancipation. Arouse them to intimate potential and opportunities that they will arbitrate themselves. Lead them to release their sensitivity, their otherness and their singularity. Inculcate ethical principles and requirement of life. Innerver at the bottom of them an emotional "capital", a "capital" of love, a "capital" of self -realization, a "capital" of humanity which by definition escape the parents and radically disson from the "capital" heritage , scholarship holder or real estate. In short, it is to embody a human exemplarity rather than a material icon, an affective reference rather than a objective of success. In this prism, it is not certain that the destiny of the "daughters and son of" narrated by Raphaëlle Bacqué and Vanessa Schneider is dreaming. But it is certain that it even further legitimizes the debate on an in -depth reform of taxation.

Denis Lafay (*)

9 minutes

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Commentaires18Guillaumeà écrit le 20/08/2021 à 23:05Signaler Et puis en en-tête cette idée que tout est bien et moral dans la vie sauf l'argent donc il faut le taxer c'est une caricature n'est-ce pas ?