Another attack on family holding companies? How long are we going to keep flying blind?

Once again, France is going after the people who build, pass things on and organise.

This time, it is family holding companies that are being put through the grinder. The idea? Taxing undistributed dividends kept in reserve at up to 15 %.

Words spoken without flinching by Charles de Courson, the budget's general rapporteur, as if this were some tax anomaly to be fixed, not the way thousands of company directors prepare their succession, manage their cash, or brace for hard times.

Taxing money that does not circulate means attacking prudence

In many SMEs and family groups, holding companies play a simple role: structuring, protecting, passing things on.

Building up reserves is not speculation. It is an act of responsible management. It means planning ahead, smoothing things out, reinvesting when it makes sense.

But in this France that is running out of budgetary breath, anything that even remotely looks like a pocket of stability becomes a target.

This is not a policy. It is permanent improvisation.

You cannot tell company directors to take risks and then blame them for planning ahead.

You cannot heap praise on the entrepreneur and then act surprised that they structure their assets so those assets survive political mood swings.

This kind of announcement, even while it is "under discussion", is enough to break confidence. Because everyone understands that if the idea is put on the table once, it can come back tomorrow in another form.

The message is simple: anything that endures will be taxed

After the "Zucman tax" was judged unworkable, the same reflex is being recycled: hit wherever the pushback is weakest. Holding companies, Dutreil pacts, cash waiting to be reinvested...

But by constantly labelling structures as "dubious optimisation", you end up sending a dangerous message: anything that is stable, long-term or well-prepared becomes suspect.

Let us say it again, calmly: a reserve is not fraud

It is a way of protecting companies. Of preserving their ability to fund themselves without taking on debt. Of withstanding volatility.

Real responsibility would be to build a stable, legible, lasting framework. Not to invent a new tax every three months depending on the holes in the budget.

Because by keeping firing at the shock absorbers, it is the whole engine that risks giving out.

What I propose: putting the long term back into tax policy

Rather than piling up tax reactions the way you bail out a leak with a bucket, I propose a fundamental overhaul:

• A 5-year moratorium on any tax affecting business succession and reserves. Let the players invest and pass things on without the rules changing every six months.
• A multi-year commitment framework between the state and entrepreneurs, in which the tax rules of the game are clarified, documented and non-retroactive. As in the countries that inspire confidence.
• A public fiscal-stability indicator, published every year, measuring in concrete terms the number of reforms, laws and decrees, and their effect on companies. So that we finally grasp the harm we are doing.

Because you do not rebuild France with patches. You rebuild it with people who still believe in it enough to invest in it.

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