Question 16393 — children

Summary

Mr. Alexandre Allegret-Pilot draws the attention of the Minister of the Economy, Finance and Industrial, Energy and Digital Sovereignty to the growing inadequacy of family taxation to the contemporary realities of co-parenting after separation. Since the law of March 4, 2002 relating to parental authority, the legislator has forcefully affirmed the principle of co-parenting. This major development in family law is based on the idea that the separation of the couple should not call into question the involvement of each parent in the child's life. Both parents remain holders of parental authority and continue to jointly assume responsibilities related to the maintenance, education and development of their child. This legal development has gradually been reflected in family practices. More and more separated parents organize themselves in order to maintain regular and substantial links with their children. If alternating residence constitutes the most visible example of this evolution, it only represents part of the situations encountered. Many families operate according to so-called traditional, extended or adapted residence arrangements, in which the child spends a significant part of his time with each of his parents without necessarily legally fall under the alternating residence. Thus, it is not uncommon for a child to be hosted by their main non-hosting parent every other weekend, part of the school holidays, several nights during the week or according to organizations adapted to professional and school constraints. In certain cases, the residence time reaches 35%, 40% or even more of the annual time with this parent. However, these situations remain assimilated for tax purposes to an exclusive residence with the other parent. This reality leads to a paradoxical situation. While family law recognizes the involvement of both parents and encourages their active participation in the child's life, tax law continues to be largely based on a binary logic opposing a parent deemed to assume the main responsibility for the child to another parent whose contribution remains insufficiently recognized. In fact, many separated parents incur significant and ongoing expenses to welcome their children in good conditions. They must have suitable accommodation, arrange a room or living space, cover the costs of food, transport, clothing, school equipment, leisure activities, extracurricular activities or even contribute to medical and educational. These expenses exist regardless of the tax status retained and often increase as parents seek to maintain a balanced exercise of their parental responsibilities. However, in many configurations, all or almost all of the tax advantages attached to the child remain allocated to a single tax household. This situation fuels a feeling of incomprehension among many parents who participate actively in the education and maintenance of their children without this involvement being taken into account by current tax mechanisms. This problem does not only concern the family quotient. It questions more broadly all the tax and parafiscal measures linked to the presence of dependent children, whether direct tax advantages, certain credits or tax reductions, or even measures including the allocation conditions are based on criteria of exclusive attachment to a household. It also raises a question of fairness in tax matters. Indeed, two very similar family situations can today give rise to radically different tax treatments. Thus, a legally recognized alternating residence can allow sharing of certain tax advantages while a residence organized up to 45% of the time with one parent and 55% with the other can lead to a full allocation of these same benefits to a single household. A difference of a few days of residence per year can thus produce tax consequences that are disproportionate to the reality of each person's parental investment. This threshold logic appears increasingly difficult to reconcile with the principles of equality before public charges and adaptation. of the law to contemporary social realities. It leads to situations being treated differently which, in fact, are often very comparable. Several parliamentarians have already drawn the Government's attention to these difficulties and have raised the possibility of a move towards mechanisms more based on the reality of the child's residence time or on the effective distribution of the responsibilities assumed by each of the parents. Such an approach would make it possible to go beyond the current opposition between exclusive residence and alternating residence to better take into account the diversity of family organizations. In particular, consideration could be given to the advisability of establishing a system of proportional distribution of certain tax advantages, taking into account the actual time the child is cared for by each of its parents. Such an evolution would have the advantage of ensuring better continuity between different family situations, avoiding the threshold effects currently observed and bringing taxation closer to the reality experienced by separated families. It would also make it possible to strengthen coherence between the objectives pursued by family law, which encourages the involvement of both parents after separation, and those of tax law, which should to be able to more faithfully reflect the responsibilities actually exercised by each person. In this context, he asks whether the Government plans to conduct an overall study on the tax consequences of the different modes of residence of children after separation and on the adequacy of current systems with the contemporary realities of co-parenting. He also asks him if the Government intends to examine the proposals aimed at better taking into consideration the child's actual residence time with each of his parents as well as the expenses actually borne by them. Finally, he wishes to know whether a reform allowing a more progressive and proportional distribution of tax advantages linked to dependent children could be considered in order to guarantee better fairness between separated families, to limit threshold effects currently observed and to ensure greater consistency between tax law and the principle of co-parenting enshrined in family law.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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