It’s the tax fight…: A New Class Struggle, Alain Guilloux, André Harris

In France, people declare their income to pay taxes; this declarative system is accompanied by controls to expose or deter fraudsters. Who are the civil servants responsible for conducting these investigations? Where do they come from? What are their preferred targets? What motivates them? Through portraits and interviews with basic-level inspectors, then their superiors, then their "victims" or those who escape their nets, but also political leaders (from Jean-Marie Le Pen to Alain Madelin and Pierre Bérégovoy), a radiography of the French in their relationship with money, taxes and fraud, and therefore with the State, emerges. It becomes clear that the "class struggle" of the past is being replaced by an increasingly radical opposition - deeply felt, precisely, in the fiscal arena - between "productive" and "protected" individuals, between all those who undertake at their own risk, who are convinced that they are "keeping the economy alive", and the beneficiaries of special statuses, primarily civil servants, who, while often earning less, take very little "risk". There is no doubt that with the ever-widening opening of borders, increasing competition and the dismantling of protections, this antagonism will become increasingly exacerbated. André Harris, producer with Alain de Sédouy of Le Chagrin et la Pitié, also co-directed Français si vous saviez and wrote several major investigative works such as Voyage à l'intérieur du Parti communiste, Les Patrons, Juifs et Français. Allain Guilloux, a former tax inspector, has become a lawyer specializing in tax advice.