Budget 2027: MPs tax big business, but the Treasury holds the pen

According to Le Monde, MPs on Friday adopted several left-wing amendments taxing large companies, against the government's advice. They also adopted the "pacte Papin" (a proposal named after its backer, whose exact content is not spelled out here). The paper cautions, however, that these measures should be taken with a pinch of salt: the 2027 budget will be largely rewritten as it passes back and forth between the two chambers, with a probable recourse to Article 49.3 (the constitutional device letting the government push a text through without a full vote) or to budgetary ordinances.

The details of rates and amounts do not appear in the dispatch we have, and we will not invent them. The precise content of the "pacte Papin" is not specified here either.

What is our reading? That the vote is real, and its effect probably decorative. An Assembly can vote what it likes so long as the government keeps the means to undo the next day what was done the day before. Article 49.3 is the perfect tool: you debate at length, applaud the amendments, then table a clean text without the passages that sting. The MPs propose; the executive crosses out.

This is where the old formula about the committee managing the common affairs of the bourgeoisie regains its relevance, provided it is handled with nuance. The state is not a monolith: the Assembly is a field of struggle, and this vote proves it. But that field has limits, set by the need not to hinder accumulation. When a tax hits the profits of the largest firms, the reflex is not the neutrality of an umpire but the defence of competitiveness, attractiveness and confidence. The vocabulary changes; the orientation stays put.

And this is where we must talk about fetishism. We will soon hear that "markets would not like it", that "the budget situation demands" corrections, that "confidence" requires backtracking on the taxes. Markets have no opinions; investors, banks and ministers do, and they rarely state them openly. Presenting a political decision as a natural constraint is the whole sleight of hand.

Who pays, then, if the taxes on big business evaporate along the way? The deficit, for its part, does not evaporate. It is filled elsewhere: cuts to public spending, indirect taxation, services trimmed back. In other words, by those whose income comes from a wage and who have no tax department to optimise their position. Profits derive from the unpaid labour of those same employees; exempting the former and then presenting the latter with the bill is the most elegant loop in the system.

What will survive the vote remains to be seen. If some of the taxes clear the hurdle of the final text, it will prove that the balance of forces in Parliament matters. If they vanish, the demonstration will be just as clear, and free of charge.