The mayor of Sarcelles rants against the new criteria for equalization of the business tax in the Val-d’Oise, a redistribution mechanism which aims to reduce inequalities between the different local authorities. The envelope must be distributed among the least favored cities. It is up to each county council to set these sharing criteria.
Patrick Haddad (PS), who is also a departmental opposition councilor, denounces these new criteria, established, according to him, “on the sly and in an opaque manner”. The socialist group, which voted “against” during the vote of the deliberation, alerted the prefect of Val-d’Oise. At the same time, the city of Sarcelles filed an appeal with the administrative court.
“The departmental business tax equalization funds are managed by the departmental councils and supplied by an allocation taken from state revenue, down 30% over 2016-2019, recalls the Department of Val-d’Oise. The seven criteria for this fund and the municipal data had not been updated for ten years. Following the seizure of a former departmental councilor, the prefect of Val-d’Oise invited the departmental council to update them. »
A “population” criterion for distributing this fund
On November 26, the elected representatives of the Department therefore decided to establish four “objective” criteria to distribute this fund, amounting to more than 8 million euros in 2021. “These are social criteria (number number of RSA beneficiaries and number of job seekers in the municipality), demographic and fiscal (per inhabitant). The updating of the municipal figures has made it possible to have an objective and precise vision of the social reality of the territory”, assures the Department of Val-d’Oise.
Following the updating of the criteria, the allocation for the municipality of Sarcelles amounts to 689,000 euros in 2021 instead of 829,000 euros, i.e. a “loss” of 140,000 euros. Conversely, Franconville, for example, earns more than 53,000 euros, points out Patrick Haddad.
“The result is paradoxical because cities like Sarcelles, Garges (-70,600 euros), Goussainville (-54,100 euros), etc. which are the poorest cities are also those who lose the most when equalization is precisely intended to favor the most modest cities, raises the mayor of Sarcelles. The departmental council takes into account half the number of inhabitants in the method of calculation and no longer only social and fiscal criteria. We could also have taken into account the number of social housing units. »
Poor towns remain “the first beneficiaries”
According to the departmental council, the municipalities of Argenteuil, Sarcelles, Garges-lès-Gonesse and Villiers-le-Bel remain “the first beneficiaries of this fund to the tune of more than 2.4 million euros”. In total, 148 municipalities out of 184 now benefit from an allocation from the departmental business tax equalization fund. This year, 114 municipalities saw their allocation increase against 34 decrease. “The changes are mainly explained by the dynamics of social criteria for ten years in the department”, he explains.
Regarding the case of the municipality of Sarcelles raised by Patrick Haddad, the department specifies that “the endowment represents approximately 0.1% of the city’s revenue. It would have been even less important (around 627,000 euros) with the old criteria. These updated criteria allow the municipality of Sarcelles to be a “winner” in the long term, in the order of 200,000 euros over the period 2020-2028. »
“If the city has been enriched, I am the first to be satisfied, but here we are talking about 17% less on the envelope, this does not correspond in any way to the real social and fiscal improvement of the municipality”, estimates Patrick Haddad.
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