AGRICULTURAL TAXES
Where the big guys are ready to see the little guys pay

The Journal des Débats published a very interesting, let's even say curious, article on the "agricultural flat rate" the day before yesterday. Our colleague, after recalling the principle of the "flat rate", justified by the difficulty farmers have in keeping accounts, wrote:
Unfortunately, the kindness of the legislator led him to imagine "basic tax reductions". At this time, for example, profits below 1,500 francs are totally exempt, and those varying from 1,500 to 4,000 are only counted for half. However, these profits are not real, they are flat rates...

The agricultural profit is, in fact, supposed to be equal to the cadastral income increased by a quarter. But this is really just a supposition: everyone knows that in reality the cadastral income represents only a tiny part of the real income from the land. Result?

All rural inheritances whose surface area is less than 15 or 20 hectares are exempt - in fact - from any contribution on the farmer's profits.
So much so that, out of three million five hundred thousand rural farms, only five hundred thousand pay anything. And that is why the tax on agricultural profits produces so little...
The Journal des Débats does not hesitate to conclude: Common sense simply dictated that the basic tax relief be eliminated or at least reduced. If this was not done, it adds, it was to spare the "sensitivities" of the rural voter.

And our colleague protests against the idea of ​​hitting "large farmers" by forcing them alone to make controlled declarations. He cries out against inequity and class legislation."

It is certain that, here as elsewhere, we must guard against demagogy. And it is a farmer subscriber himself who writes to us:
We must not believe that rural people exempted by the law are so "small" I am well placed, I who am taxed on a flat-rate profit of 5,220 francs and who employ twelve people, to tell you that farmers making 3,000 francs of THEORETICAL profits are not so "small".

But there is one remark that one cannot help but make: As long as it was a question of not paying, the big farmers demanded the status quo in the name of the interests of the small farmers, worthy of all consideration and all consideration: "Touch the ploughman only with a light hand!..."
Today, when the disproportion appears too crudely between agricultural taxes and commercial, industrial or other taxes, when the scandal is manifest, and when it is a question of paying, the big farmers make us say: Why should we be the only ones to pay the costs of the readjustment? Could not the "small" and the "medium" also take their share? You know that they are privileged. The flat-rate system benefits them at least as much as us.

The interests of small farming? It is these that we pretend to defend as long as they are confused with those of large farming.
As soon as they diverge, we shamelessly drop the camouflage.

Jean Piot