Fiscalité du patrimoine. L’efficace, l’optimal et le juste : quel critère ?

The two texts discussed here aim to change the way we think about wealth. The Grand retour de la terre proposes a major tax reform based on a taxing the market value of property, while Repenser l'héritage proposes a major reform of gift and inheritance tax to make it more progressive, abolish exemptions, increase revenue and reduce tax on small inheritances. There are three ways of justifying a tax policy. A policy is efficient when it maximises overall production or consumption or minimises losses. An optimal policy deals with a trade-off between efficiency and equity, often reduced to the size of the cake and how it?s shared. Arguments in terms of justice also take into account efficiency and equity, but do not put them on the same level: by construction, efficiency must serve something, in this case equity in all its dimensions. The first text argues mainly from the point of view of efficiency: the idea of a property tax is justified mainly by the inelasticity of the tax base, and therefore by efficiency. Practical issues and the question of horizontal equity are dismissed too quickly. The second text is much more concerned with practical issues, demonstrating the uselessness of exemptions in terms of economic efficiency. However, if inheritance tax is fair, why reduce it for 99% of the population? A tax is fair if its mechanism is perceived as fair, not because it exempts enough people. There are taxes that are perceived as fair and that have a similar impact on reducing inequalities in transmission, in particular the taxation of wealth and of high incomes. In this context, taxing all real capital gains, including on inheritance, could secure a greater consensus by combining a reduction in inequalities with horizontal equity.