Three professional organizations representing hoteliers and tourism professionals announced on Friday that they had filed an appeal before the Council of State to cancel the reintroduction of the tax break enjoyed by Airbnb-type rentals.
Last week, several parliamentarians mobilized on the subject, including the communist senator Ian Brossat and the environmentalist deputy Julien Bayou, also announced an appeal before the highest administrative court
“so that the government enforces the law that Parliament has passed”
.
The cause was a hiccup that occurred during the examination of the state budget adopted at the end of 2023: the government had forgotten to delete an article introduced by the opposition significantly reducing the tax allowance for furnished tourist accommodation.
In mid-February, a note from the Official Bulletin of Public Finances dedicated to taxes reintroduced this tax reduction of up to 71% of the turnover generated by rentals of furnished tourist accommodation.
The “trouble” of representatives of the sector
This reintroduction
“sows confusion, among representatives of the sector, over the government's real desire to regulate furnished tourist accommodation and put an end to the tax optimization from which this activity has benefited for many years”
, denounced the association on Friday for professional tourism (AToP), the group of hotels and restaurants of France (GHR) and the union of hotel trades and industries (UMIH).
“It is all the more incomprehensible since the government has just announced a savings plan of 10 billion euros
,” the professionals say in a press release.
These organizations
“have therefore taken the joint decision to file a request in excess of power with the Council of State against
the Minister of the Economy
(…) in order to request the immediate suspension of the tax investigation then its cancellation by the judge »
.
An “error” according to the government
Patrick Hayat, president of the AToP, underlines that this measure
“taken in total opposition to the wishes of the legislator, represents a cost for the State of 330 million euros according to the Council of compulsory deductions”
.
At the initiative of parliamentarians from several sides, the article adopted during the examination of the 2024 draft budget planned to lower the tax reduction to 30% in areas which encounter difficulties in accessing housing.
The government, if it had agreed to review the tax niche, was unfavorable to the idea of reducing the reduction to this extent, and could have removed the measure from the text when using article 49.3 but the had left by
“error”
.
The reintroduction of the reduction was decided to
“limit the consequences of retroactive application”
, according to the ministry.