Inheritance regains its place as the primary determinant of wealth

Inheritance becomes the main passport to great fortune

Forty years have been enough to reshuffle the deck. The share of large inherited fortunes in the total wealth of French households now represents 60%, compared to 35% at the beginning of the 1970s [9]. France is returning to the wealth importance of the Belle Époque, driven by a tax architecture that protects the largest transfers. A tax policy option has been on the table since 2021: shift the tax base from the deceased to the heir, and tax what a person receives over their entire life rather than each transfer taken in isolation.

Over forty years, wealth has reconcentrated at the top

In 2024, the top 10% of households hold 48% of total gross wealth [1]. The top 5% hold 34% [1]. To enter this top tenth, you must own more than 857,700 euros, roughly thirty-three years of median net salary [1] [3]. Half of households have gross wealth exceeding 205,000 euros, equivalent to eight years of the same salary [1].

These inequalities are significantly stronger than income inequalities. The top 10% in wealth capture nearly half of the total wealth. The top 10% in income capture only a quarter of total income [1] [2]. Work and capital operate in two separate worlds.

The trend has intensified over forty years. The share of national wealth held by the richest 1% rose from 16% in 1984 to 24% in 2022 [7] [8]. Over the same period, the share held by the bottom half of the population has been nearly halved. International comparison provides nuance without erasing the picture: in France, the top 10% in wealth own just over half of total wealth, compared to 60% in Germany and 79% in the United States [6].

Birth supplants savings as a source of wealth

The source of this concentration matters as much as its scale. The value of wealth transmitted each year represented 20 to 25% of national income before 1914. It collapsed to around 5% after World War II, then rose back to 12% in 2016 [9]. The mechanism is well known: when capital returns consistently exceed growth, accumulating is worth more than working, and inheriting is worth more still than accumulating [8] [9].

The 500 largest professional fortunes rose from 124 billion euros in 2003 to 1,170 billion in 2023, according to Challenges magazine. This tenfold increase cannot be explained by twenty additional years of hard work.

In 2024, 41% of households have already received at least one inheritance during their lifetime [4]. Among those aged 70 and over, this proportion reaches 63%: one-third of French people who have reached adulthood have never received a transfer. The concentration also appears in the amounts: only 15.4% of inheritances exceed 100,000 euros in 2024, yet these few large inheritances capture the bulk of the value transferred [4].

A top-tier tax system that lets the largest fortunes slip through

France displayed in 2024 a marginal rate of 45% on successions in the direct line, the highest in the European Union [5]. This rate applies only beyond 1,805,677 euros per child. Its actual weight is much lower: only 35% of successions actually result in duties paid to the state [5].

The total product of mutation duties reached 20.8 billion euros in 2023, of which 16.6 billion from successions and 4.3 billion from donations [5]. This total represents 0.7% of GDP, the highest level in the OECD along with Belgium and South Korea. Yet allowances and exemptions leave the majority of transfers beyond reach.

The primary channel for legal avoidance is life insurance. Total outstanding policies reached 2,107 billion euros at the end of 2025, or 1.4 times GDP [11]. Capital transferred through this channel escapes ordinary succession duties, with its own allowances.

The second channel is the Dutreil pact, a partial exemption for business transmission. Its tax cost is estimated at “approximately 500 million euros” in the annex to the 2024 budget bill [5]. This figure is qualified as an “order of magnitude” and has not changed for more than ten years. The number of beneficiaries is listed as “not determined” [5]. The world’s leading power in succession taxation on paper, France does not know precisely what it taxes.

The Court of Accounts confirms this in its report of 25 September 2024: the lack of precise and updated data makes it difficult to assess exactly the impact of tax provisions [5]. It recommends a comprehensive statistical study before any legislative change.

Tax the heir on what they receive over their lifetime, not the deceased on what they leave

The current architecture taxes what the deceased owned at death. It produces documented unequal treatment. Two heirs each receiving 200,000 euros over their lifetime pay exactly the same tax, whether they have already received 190,000 euros from an earlier inheritance or are just beginning to inherit [5] [9]. The tax burden depends on the size of each transfer taken individually, never on the wealth accumulated by the heir.

The Blanchard-Tirole Commission of June 2021 and the Economic Analysis Council (CAE) note of December 2021 defend the same corrective principle [9] [10]. A unified regime for taxing successions and donations, based on the cumulative amount received by the heir throughout their life, with a progressive rate depending on that cumulative total. A child receiving 90,000 euros three times, at fifteen-year intervals, pays nothing in the current system: the 100,000-euro allowance every fifteen years applies each time. In a cumulative-flow system, they pay on 270,000 euros. The family transmitting a primary residence below this threshold remains unchanged.

The tax unit shifts from the deceased to the heir. The calculation base moves from a single transmission to all flows received by a person over their lifetime [9] [10]. Life insurance is reintegrated into this base. The Dutreil pact remains defensible for SMEs with genuine operational transmission, but its cost becomes measurable and can be conditioned on verifiable commitments.

To make this shift effective, a prerequisite imposes itself: create a tax register of flows transmitted throughout life, notary by notary, life insurance contract by life insurance contract. The Court of Accounts calls for this statistical undertaking before any legislative reform [5].

In 2021, the CAE established that very few people wish for children to be exposed to different opportunities based on their birth [9]. Yet most parents do not want their transfers to be taxed. This tension is explained by a deficit of information on who pays what: 65% of successions today generate no duties [5].

Sources

[1] INSEE, “The amounts of wealth held by households in 2024,” INSEE Focus no. 371, December 2025, https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/8672665 (accessed 05/09/2026).

[2] INSEE, “Households’ wealth holdings in 2024,” INSEE Focus no. 354, May 2025, https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/8569009 (accessed 05/09/2026).

[3] INSEE, “Salaries in the private sector in 2024,” INSEE Première no. 2079, October 2025, https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/8657156 (accessed 05/09/2026).

[4] INSEE, “Intergenerational transfers in 2024: donations, inheritances and assistance,” INSEE Résultats, April 2026, https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/8960217 (accessed 05/09/2026).

[5] Court of Accounts, Succession Rights, public report, 25 September 2024, https://www.ccomptes.fr/fr/publications/les-droits-de-succession (accessed 05/09/2026).

[6] OECD, Society at a Glance 2024: OECD Social Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1787/6af21682-en (accessed 05/09/2026).

[7] World Inequality Database, France data 1984-2022, https://wid.world/country/france/ (accessed 05/09/2026).

[8] Garbinti (B.), Goupille-Lebret (J.) and Piketty (T.), “Wealth Inequality in France, 1800–2014,” Journal of the European Economic Association, 2021; summary accessible via Variances (ENSAE), https://www.ensae.org/fr/variances/article/evolution-des-inegalites-de-patrimoine-en-france-1800-2014/4510 (accessed 05/09/2026).

[9] Economic Analysis Council (CAE), Dherbécourt (C.) et al., “Rethinking inheritance,” CAE Note no. 69, December 2021, https://cae-eco.fr/static/pdf/cae-note069.pdf (accessed 05/09/2026).

[10] Blanchard (O.) and Tirole (J., reporters), Major Economic Challenges, International Commission, June 2021: chapter 2 on succession tax.

[11] France Assureurs, Life Insurance in 2025, outstanding data as of 31 December 2025.

[12] DGFiP, Tax Statistics no. 43, March 2026: receipts from gifts and successions duties 2024-2025.