Marine Le Pen would abolish France’s real estate wealth tax and replace it with a levy on financial wealth that spares business owners’ stakes in their own companies.
The far-right National Rally (RN) candidate, who so far tops the polls for the April 2027 presidential election, set out the plan at party headquarters in Paris on October 6.
She also promised to strengthen the Dutreil regime, France’s main relief from inheritance and gift tax on family businesses.
For companies, the plan would cut production taxes by €20 billion and give small businesses and farmers a 150% deduction on investments in automation and digitalization. Multinationals would be taxed on profits estimated by applying their average margin to French revenue.
What the Swap Would Change
France’s current levy, the real estate wealth tax (impôt sur la fortune immobilière, IFI), replaced the broader solidarity wealth tax in 2018 under President Emmanuel Macron. It applies once a household’s net property holdings exceed €1.3 million, at marginal rates of 0.5% to 1.5%.
In 2025, it raised about €2.3 billion (approximately $2.6 billion) from roughly 193,600 households, according to France’s tax administration.
Le Pen has attacked the IFI since her 2022 campaign, calling it a tax on French families’ rootedness in property that lets speculative financial fortunes off the hook.
Her party’s counter-budget for 2026 projected that a financial wealth tax would raise €4 billion a year.
Her presentation this week gave no threshold or rate schedule for the new tax. Earlier RN platforms kept the IFI’s progressive scale and excluded the main home.
Her Dutreil pledge runs against this year’s reforms. The regime exempts 75% of the value of qualifying family-business shares from inheritance and gift tax, but the 2026 Finance Law, in force since February 21, lengthened heirs’ holding commitment from four to six years.
That law also removed luxury and other non-operating assets, such as yachts and aircraft, from the relief. Coverage of Le Pen’s presentation gave no detail on how she would reinforce it.
A €140 Billion Plan
The wealth measures sit inside a budget that promises €140 billion (approximately $157 billion) in net savings by 2032 compared with 2026, up from the €125 billion the RN pledged earlier.
Le Pen targets a primary budget balance within 18 months of taking office and a deficit below 3% of GDP by 2030, against roughly 5.4% expected this year.
She would also put a constitutional ‘golden rule’ limiting future deficits to a referendum, possibly in her first year in office.
Current government ministers rejected the arithmetic within hours. Economy Minister Roland Lescure called the plan’s 1.8% growth assumption far above serious forecasts and derided most of its immigration savings as unconstitutional, while Public Accounts Minister David Amiel called it a “Potemkin budget.”
A Change in Who Pays
Charlie Maggi of The Open World sees real appeal for entrepreneurs, especially in making it easier “to pass on a family business and keep jobs in France.” Replacing a property wealth tax with a financial one, however, “means changing who pays. It isn’t a tax cut for everyone.”
In practice, a family whose wealth sits mostly in Paris apartments would likely pay less, while an investor holding a large portfolio of listed shares or bonds in companies he does not run would start paying. How many households land on each side depends on a threshold and rates the RN has yet to publish.
Philippe May of EC Holdings reaches the same verdict from a free-market angle. The exemption for owners’ stakes in their own companies “would be a real relief for business owners,” he argues, but moving the base to financial assets “is only a shift of the taxable basis.”
May, who describes Le Pen as “a socialist economically,” calls the package “some very small step in the right direction.”
He also objects to her call for stronger international action against tax avoidance, noting that avoidance, unlike evasion, is legal.
Investing in France Is Not Moving There
“France is already attractive to foreign investment,” Maggi points out, noting that it has ranked first in Europe by number of foreign investment projects for seven consecutive years.
Non-resident individuals generally face a 12.8% French withholding tax on dividends, often lower under a tax treaty, and any tax owed at home is a separate matter.
“Investing in France and moving your tax residence there are two different decisions,” Maggi argues.
For those who do relocate, France already softens the IFI. Newcomers who were not French tax residents in the previous five years pay it only on French property through December 31 of the fifth year after they arrive.
The proposals published so far do not say whether a financial wealth tax would offer a similar carve-out for foreign portfolios.
Little Brake on Departures
Wealthy French taxpayers have spent the past few years watching one proposal after another, from the Zucman tax to Le Pen’s latest plan, according to David Lesperance of Lesperance & Associates. They have been preparing strategies “ranging from reorganization to moving,” he notes.
The Zucman tax, a proposed 2% annual minimum levy on fortunes above €100 million (approximately $112 million), cleared the National Assembly as a standalone bill in early 2025, before the Senate blocked it.
Lawmakers rejected it again during last autumn’s budget debate. Instead, the 2026 Finance Law imposed a 20% charge on luxury assets, such as yachts and jets, held in passive holding companies worth more than €5 million.
Even if Le Pen’s proposals pass, which he doubts, May expects their effect on the emigration of high-net-worth individuals to be “minimal.”
Any tax saving would be small, he argues. Taxes are also only part of the push: he cites crime and a constant sense of insecurity, as well as what he sees as growing public hostility toward the wealthy.
Nor, in May’s experience, are clients bracing for a Le Pen victory. He says her likely election “does not influence the decision” of wealthy French families to prepare a Plan B.
Maggi expects a shift “possibly for some” at most. Families weighing a move also consider business opportunities, schools, safety, and “whether the rules will stay stable.”
Monaco, often named alongside Switzerland and Italy as a destination, offers French citizens less than its reputation suggests.
Under a 1963 bilateral convention, French nationals who settle there remain liable for French income tax, and those who arrived from 1989 onward owe France’s real estate wealth tax on worldwide property.
Switzerland’s lump-sum taxation and Italy’s flat tax for new residents, now €300,000 (approximately $337,000) a year, remain open to French nationals.
Immigration Cuts Against the Pitch
Immigration carries a large share of the promised savings. A “national priority” (priorité nationale) policy giving French citizens first claim on jobs, social housing, and welfare, alongside tighter migration controls, would save €15 billion (approximately $17 billion) in its first year and €29 billion in a full year, by the RN’s estimate.
Maggi sees a contradiction in courting foreign investment while making foreigners feel less welcome. “Businesses need skilled workers as well as money,” he argues, and making legal immigration and international recruitment harder “could hurt the companies these tax measures are supposed to support.”
France courts foreign founders and specialists through residence routes such as the Talent Passport.
Le Pen’s proposals did not address how such programs would fare under tighter controls.
Polls, Courts, and Parliament
Official polls put Le Pen at up to 36% in the first round, against no more than 24% for her closest rival, centrist Édouard Philippe, and show her beating him in a run-off. The election is set for April 18 and May 2, 2027. Her place on the ballot cleared in July, when the Paris Court of Appeal upheld her conviction for embezzling European Parliament funds but cut her ban from office to a period she had already served.
She plans a further appeal to the Court of Cassation. Maggi considers a Le Pen victory “a real possibility” but sees “more populism than a convincing plan to govern.”
“Announcing lower taxes and huge savings is easy,” he argues; “delivering both without damaging the economy or public services is much harder.”
Even a win would not settle the matter. Finance bills must pass both houses of Parliament, May notes, so he considers the measures unlikely to become law.
Lesperance traces the stalemate to the same machinery: no proposal has yet become policy “because of the complicated and disjointed French legislative process.”
For wealthy French families, the real test of Le Pen’s plan would come after the presidential vote, in a National Assembly where her camp has never held a majority.
