Proposition 54K3147

Projet de loi portant des dispositions diverses en matière d'impôts sur les revenus.

General information ¶

Submitted by

MR Swedish coalition

Submission date

June 11, 2018

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

tax evasion tax law tax on capital corporation tax tax-free allowance

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

CD&V Open Vld N-VA MR

Voted to reject

Groen Vooruit Ecolo LE PS | SP DéFI PVDA | PTB

Abstained from voting

∉ PP VB

Party dissidents ¶

• Olivier Maingain (MR) voted to reject.

Contact form ¶

Do you have a question or request regarding this proposition? Select the most appropriate option for your request and I will get back to you shortly.

Discussion ¶

July 19, 2018 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

The rapporteurs, Mr Laaouej and Piedboeuf, refer to the written report.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, the opinion of the State Council says everything about the quality of this bill. It is in fact a correctional law of the law that was quickly passed in December to reform, in particular, the corporate tax. This correctional law itself has been amended extensively and extensively in commission. We requested a second reading; on this occasion, the Parliament’s services gave us a legal note that still needed corrections.

The State Council denounces, and we too, this deplorable way of operating in technical and delicate subjects such as those of taxation, in particular in terms of the ability to assess the intentions of the government and the budgetary impact of the measures finally voted. This is even more problematic because, among the measures under consideration, changes may have significant implications for the calculation of the valuation of transfer prices; measures that may have, for some companies, an impact of millions or even tens of millions of euros; especially for the state budget and public finances.

This is in the image, in tax matters, of the action of this government: somewhat vague intentions appearing in the explanation of the reasons for the bills you submit to us; overvaluations in terms of budgetary impact of revenues, which never verify at the time of calculation of the tax; a deficit that grows and will weigh on future generations and the capacity to invest in the economy of tomorrow and in social cohesion.

Unfortunately, this bill does not deny the bad habits of the government.

I would like to specifically point out three measures that pose problems to us in this text. The first is the increase in the possibility of deduction of share income, up to 800 euros. This measure is anti-redistribution, in the sense that it will strengthen the financial means of people who already have the ability to invest in shares. If this is the case, it will be at the expense of all the others, many more, who cannot invest in shares and ⁇ not for income beyond 800 euros.

This measure is costly. As a reminder, it was at the beginning to replace the exemption of the first interest income on savings books. But given the interest rates currently applied, this measure had become very inexpensive for the public finances, as very few taxpayers reached that ceiling. A measure that no longer costs anything is replaced by a measure whose budgetary impact is poorly assessed and which risks to weigh very heavily on public finances.

Finally, it is not sufficiently targeted, and it is another constant of your government’s action. We truly believe that certain sectors of the economy, ⁇ innovative, ⁇ positive in terms of job creation opportunities, which are ⁇ engines for the Belgian economy of tomorrow, can be the subject of targeted measures, special support.

But your measurement is directed to the whole coming. Regardless of the area of economic activity in which you invest through these shares, you will benefit from this exemption. We need to be much more focused on the sectors of the future, on the sectors that are likely to rebuild and drive our economy towards excellence and stimulate investment and job creation.

The second measure I wanted to pinpoint is that concerning the corrections made to the minimum income conditions for SME executives to comply with in order to benefit from the tax reduction for SMEs. When adopting the corporate tax reform, we had heard representatives of SMEs, including the Union of the Middle Class, who had denounced the height of the ceilings and minimum income to be granted to SME executives to enable them to benefit from this tax reduction. There are corrections, but they are completely insufficient.

This government remains deaf to arguments that are yet full of economic sense. These are those repeated in particular by the Union of the middle classes which says that some entrepreneurs, rather than granting themselves high wages, prefer to reinvest their profits in the strengthening of their production tool, in the investment of material that will allow them to sustain their business, rather than targeting short-term and high income. You remain deaf to these arguments which are yet full of economic meaning. We do not understand it. I have, on behalf of my group, in second reading, submitted amendments allowing to lower these salary ceilings, without further success. I am sorry, but this will not prevent us from continuing to advocate on this subject.

Finally, in a somewhat anodine way and without any other form of comment, you remove a ⁇ interesting ecological measure. This is the ability for companies to deduct at 125% the costs incurred in the organization of collective transport for their workers, in the organization and support of workers who would go to work by bicycle (bicycle parking, dressing rooms, repair of bicycles, etc.). You are simply removing this measure.

Again, you are completely at counter-current of quite contemporary public health issues, including the health of those who go to work by bicycle. As a regular cyclist, you know how much cycling helps to maintain your health. But more bicycles on the road, it is also less cars and less fine particle pollution and therefore less cardiovascular and other diseases. But, also in terms of mobility and economy, and this is one of the indicators that we highlighted this morning in the figures proposed by Ecolo-Groen to assess the government action, Belgium is one of the most bottled countries in Europe. The congestion that characterizes it every morning and every evening is obviously very expensive to our economy. Workers who are stuck in traffic jams are non-productive workers. The cost of traffic jams is estimated in billions of euros according to the estimates of the FEB, which is not the study office of Ecolo or Groen.

There are more than 8 billion euros. A government that has a real vision in matters of mobility, environment, public health, economies, should encourage alternative modes of transport and, in addition, even if this is not the subject of this text, more funding SNCB as well as public transport.

With this text, it is the opposite that you do. You prefer those who already have a lot of resources. It does not meet the expectations of SMEs. You do not encourage modern mobility practices that promote public health. It is for these different reasons that we will not be able to support this misleading text and whose budgetary impacts are dangerous for our State.

Mr. Speaker, we will vote, as soon as possible, on a series of texts that will have been discussed during the repeated plenary sessions throughout this week. We might already ask ourselves how to do this. It is probably inevitable since the parliamentary calendar causes, every time at the end of the session, a congestion of this type.

However, this is an opportunity to question the way we work and the quality of the legislative work and, in particular, the examination of this text that reaches a "top" in poor quality. We are here, in fact, in the face of a text on which the State Council stressed how unsatisfactory it was. The State Council judges the character of the legal provision "for-all".

Indeed, this document that you present to us contains provisions relating to the activation of savings including a revision of the ceiling, provisions limiting the rate of the separate contribution to 5% in case of non-compliance with the minimum remuneration of the business manager. And undoubtedly, a next legislative amendment will be necessary to completely eliminate this unfair contribution. In addition, this law includes technical corrections, the scope of which is often blurred.

We are faced with a text whose character must interpell us. As the State Council says, here we reach a higher degree in the manner in which work is broken since it is here a matter of correcting legal provisions, those of the end of the year 2017, the famous law-programme of 25 December and the law of the same date concerning the reform of the ISOC.

These provisions themselves were already full-fledged measures, of which it was already said that they would need to be corrected. Therefore we had adopted a law knowing well that it was imperfect. The overall exposure of your project comes to confirm this, since it states in a fairly transparent way that it appeared that following the review of the provisions of December 2017, improvements were desirable in order to clarify and complete their scope. In other words, we knowingly voted for a notoriously imperfect text.

Moreover, we are already certain that we will not stay there. Indeed, when this problem of the reparative law was addressed in the committee, an eminent member of the majority pointed out that other corrective measures would likely be added.

The State Council tells us that we cannot continue to work this way. Such blatant work will harm not only the quality of the texts, but also a fundamental principle in tax matters, which is the principle of equality. Legal certainty in this area – and it is not to you that I have to say, Mr. Minister – is obviously essential. The taxpayer must know in a timely manner what will be the legal and fiscal effects of its activities. The lack of transparency in the way amendments are proposed can only increase legal uncertainty. The State Council concludes purely and simply that under these conditions it is unable to assume its advisory task.

I consider it important to hear this alarm signal from the State Council, which is not an institution whose remarks can be wiped out from the back of the hand. In this case, his opinion is murderer. The term is probably too often used, but we have rarely seen comments as critical and negative. In some way, the State Council is out of play. In any case, it declares itself in the inability to examine the text in a comprehensive and in-depth manner. Some may raise their shoulders, invoking the existence of a political agreement, but I believe that, collectively, we would have any interest in hearing these criticisms. The proposal will be voted, however imperfect.

We must collectively ask ourselves how to legislate. It is not because there is a political agreement at a given time that it has to be translated into a text at any cost. That we must thus satisfy ourselves with provisions which are corrected by other provisions of which we know that they themselves will have to be corrected in their turn.

This is a way of working that is not satisfying. This is said regularly in scholarly colloques when one asks about the quality of legal texts, but here, in this particular case, we must unfortunately see it and there is no reason to rejoice!

That is why the CDH group, on the procedure used and regardless of the uncertainties related to the content, will vote against the project in such a way as to mark the blow and thus relay the dissatisfactions of the State Council, in the hope that in the future we can take into account its recommendations and return to a better legislative work. This would be useful for legal certainty in tax matters.

Do other members ask for the word? (No to)

The word is to the Minister.

We had a long and interesting discussion in the committee.

Regarding the very important point raised by the two speakers concerning the Council of State, I would emphasize that the State Council had already noted in its initial opinion that new elements were effectively needed to be introduced, in particular with regard to the provisions relating to intra-group transfers, CFC legislation and interest deduction. We did this in this project.

I also emphasize that most of these remarks concern provisions that will enter into force only in 2019 and 2020. The provisions that come into force this year consist of slight changes and explanations and not substantial changes.