Zucman Tax, Tax Freeze and Lower Production Levies: Presidential Candidates’ Fiscal Remedies

France’s presidential hopefuls staged their first major economic contest of the 2027 campaign on Aug. 27, during the Medef’s Rencontre des Entrepreneurs de France. For nearly three hours at Roland-Garros’ Philippe-Chatrier court, the candidates set out competing ways to respond to France’s deepening debt and deteriorating public finances.

Their proposed remedies range from new taxes to tax cuts. The list includes a return of social VAT, a tax-freeze year and lower production taxes. The declared and potential candidates have offered sharply different approaches as they seek to answer both the country’s immediate budget problems and longer-term economic challenges.

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With Jean-Luc Mélenchon, it’s the fiscal guillotine at every level.

On the left, Gabriel Attal of Renaissance mocked Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s approach outside the forum, saying, “With Jean-Luc Mélenchon, it’s the fiscal guillotine at every level.” Mélenchon’s program, L’Avenir en commun, published in 2025, promises what it calls a “tax revolution.”

The program would restore and strengthen France’s wealth tax, the ISF, which Emmanuel Macron abolished in 2018 and replaced with the real-estate wealth tax, or IFI. It also refers to the proposed Zucman tax. The debate at the Medef forum placed these measures alongside the other candidates’ tax proposals as the campaign’s economic positions began to take shape.

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Tax revolution.