Why the French rummaged … but continue to pay

Liam hires his car in the parking lot, seizes an orange armband that he wraps with a sound scratch around his arm. The ribbon is crossed by a single word: “Urssaf”, the organization responsible for covering social contributions in France. Liam comes out of his vehicle, slams the door and walks in a decided step towards the employees of the construction site for a future fast-food brand, in Saint-Germain-lès-Arpajon (Essonne). “Hello, URSSAF inspector!”

This August 26, Liam and three other colleagues from the illegal work combat service of Évry carry out a random inspection. The identity of each worker is recorded and each company controlled to ensure that it pays its social contributions. The case is important. If the companies did not pay them, the French social system would collapse. These contributions, which contribute to fiscal pressure and represent 600 billion euros per year, feed the 800 organizations responsible for paying pensions, family allowances, unemployment benefits. They also serve to invest in public transport, or to finance our health system, including hospitals.

An explosive budgetary context

If we meet in this parking lot that day, between a concretenière and a kit area placed on the ground, it is to try to measure where social fraud in France is. The more it increases, the more we can deduce that adhesion to the mechanism of compulsory levies erodes in our country. In fact, signals in this sense seem to be accumulating for a few months due to the explosive budgetary context.

François Bayrou, still Prime Minister at a time when this issue is completed, press the French to tighten their belts to save 43.8 billion euros on the next budget. Many stand against this new austerity plan which provides for the increase in certain taxes and contributions: the non-asserting of the income tax scale according to inflation, for example, would lead to an increase for all those whose salary is indexed to the latter.

Likewise, replacing the 10 % reduction on pensions by a package would penalize the interested parties, except the most modest. The September 10 meeting was launched on social networks by a conspiratorial nebula from the far right this summer, with a watchword: “Let’s block everything”. Then, the movement transferred, bringing together yellow vests, supporters of rebellious France and the party environmentalists or even union members of the CGT – the national rally remaining away from the protest.

Tax civility

There is no shortage of reasons to go down the streets at first sight. France remains the country of the world where the fiscal pressure is the strongest, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Its compulsory levies – which bring together social contributions and taxes – represent 43.8 % of its national wealth in 2023. However, the State still requires efforts to the French.

The public deficit has been growing for fifty years. And public services deteriorate. All this maintains a distrust of tax, as reflected in the popularity of another anger movement born on social networks a few months ago, “it is Nicolas who pays”. Often relayed, there again, by far -right activists, this expression conveys the idea that the French called “average” would be the one to whom the biggest sacrifices are systematically asked to maintain unwilling social protection at arm’s length.

In reality, the report of the French with regard to the tax is much more nuanced than one might think. Judge instead: 79 % consider the fact of paying his taxpayer duty as a “citizen act”, according to the compulsory levy barometer, created in 2021 under the supervision of the Court of Auditors. “Tax consent has even climbed from the Pandemic of Covid-19,” observes Simon-Pierre Sengayrac, co-director of the Economy of the Economy of the Jean-Jaurès Foundation. The epidemic has demonstrated the usefulness of public money in such acute health contexts. »»

A stable fraud rate

A day with URSSAF inspectors confirms the analysis. In France, their controls are almost always carried out without clashes. Sometimes even in good humor, like this August 26, where the future manager of fast food shakes their hands with a smile. “I have seen, visits to the URSSAF, in thirty years of activity,” he relativizes. I prefer that we are checked so that everything is in order. Do you imagine if an unsuccessful worker seriously injured the site? It would be dramatic for him and for our image. »»

One of the inspectors, Delphine1, says he has never been insulting or threats in three years of exercise. This is far from being the case in other countries. In Brazil, for example, labor inspectors, which the author of these lines had been able to follow in 2023 for a report, were regularly threatened, sometimes killed, and, for this reason, always escorted by the police. However, compulsory levies are much lower in the country of President Lula.

They represent 33.3 % of its national wealth, according to the OECD. In France, URSSAF inspectors go to construction sites without escort and without weapons. They certainly have a bulletproof vest in their office, but almost never put it on. “Today, the rate of fraud to social contributions during our random checks is between 1.5 and 2 %. In 2012, it was between 1.5 % and 1.9 %. There is therefore no increase in fraud, ”says Didier Malric, director of the Urssaf Île-de-France. It also means that 98 % of companies do not cheat.

Public services acclaimed

In a recent study by the Jean-Jaurès Foundation (2), which dissected the 400,000 complaints published online during the great national post-yellow debate, the French are very mostly attached to their public services-72 % claim that the state of the latter occupies an important place in their choice of vote. According to the compulsory levy barometer cited above, almost as much (75 %) consider that their tax level is “too high”. But very few would accept a reduction in it if it involved a decrease in the quality of public service.

“To summarize, our fellow citizens, although Raurs, have been very attached to it, and this since the end of the 19th century, when the expression was forged, comments the economist Simon-Pierre Sengayrac. They prefer to pay for public services than paying less so as not to have them. “Like inspector Delphine:” We have a good social protection in France, which we must preserve. That’s why I like my job. “Even the future manager of Saint-Germain-lès-Arpajon, who has other franchises, collects the tax burden with philosophy:” I probably pay too much taxes, but it is also because I earn a lot of money! »»

Taxpayers therefore do not reject national taxation in principle. They mainly reproach him two things: his sometimes unfair character and the improper use of his fruits by the state. We remember that the yellow vests movement started in 2018 because a number of motorists refused to pay a new fuel tax while, at the same time, the highest income tax was lightened.

The subject of fiscal injustice remains ultrasensible and it is to signify that they are concerned that the last governments have decided to invest in the fight against social fraud. Credits have been released to recruit URSSAF inspectors. By 2027, their number will have doubled in France. “This struggle is necessary not to create a distortion of competition to the detriment of companies which respect the law, and therefore for consent to the samples does not weaken,” says Didier Malric, director of the Urssaf Île-de-France. Especially since these controls have another advantage: they report big. Social fraud costs between 6 and 8 billion euros per year. Each year, an URSSAF inspector participates in adjustments equivalent to ten times his salary.

Poorly used funds

Return to the headquarters of the Urssaf d’Évry. Liam pianote on his computer. His gaze blasted. He is sure, he detected fraud. One of the companies on the site only declared a worker when she had three on the spot. Worse: it is not the first time that she cheats. Liam shows me the bank statements of the year 2025 – Yes, inspectors have access to business transactions. Several transfers attest that undeclared people have received the equivalent of a salary during the year. Sometimes such transfers are accompanied by speaking wording: “wages”, “March 2025”. Blessed bread for URSSAF. The recovery will be salty.

As for the use of public funds, the subject is at the foundation of the current discontent: the French have the feeling that they have less and less for their money. 67 % say they are dissatisfied in the 2023 edition of the tax and social levy barometer already mentioned – 3 more points compared to 2021. 83 % also believe that the State should spend more on certain missions and less for others.

For Simon-Pierre Sengayrac, the degradation of the quality of the service rendered is partly explained by the aging of the population, which induces more health and pension costs, the two main positions of expenditure (Read infographic, p. 25). But this deterioration also comes, according to him, from the growing part of direct aid in public spending since the 1990s – when the RMI appeared (ancestor of the RSA), in particular. “More and more public money is spent in checks of any kind, while the share dedicated to investment in public services stagnates. This is one of the specificities of France. »»

A virtuous redistribution

We find the rhetoric of “mess” in all the testimonies of the popular Facebook page “it’s Nicolas who pays”. One of the Internet users to be the most active, Jean-Pierre Donnet, gives us his feeling by phone: “The problem is not the amount of my taxes, the problem is that we do not know where they are going when we have a huge debt. We feel that the horizon clogs. ” In his eyes, “there is not enough control”. An episode marked him when he was UDI municipal councilor in Valenciennes (North) in charge of commercial town planning, from 2014 to 2020. A resident had received public aid to set up his business, but she has never seen the light of day. Jean-Pierre Donnet asked him to return this sum, as provided for in the law. “This person refused. I learned later that the community knew that it lacked seriousness. But why did you give him money? “

Another element, of weight, enters the reflection: INSEE has calculated that nearly six out of ten French people receive more money from the public authorities than they pay them, both in direct monetary transfers and in services rendered by public services (education, health, police, etc.). If the tax refractors remain in the minority in France, it is therefore first for a simple reason: the system benefits the majority.

1) The first names of the inspectors were changed.

2) “What if AI was at the service of democracy?” The example of the great national debate ”, June 2025.