In-depth analysisPublic finances

Public spending and taxes: what is financed, and who pays?

Is public spending driven by headcount, benefits or interest, and have taxes kept up?

Version 2026.1 · Public data frozen on 30 September 2026 · 10 catalogue series · Lire cette analyse en français

The question

In 2025, French general government — central government, local authorities, social security — spent 57.3% of gross domestic product (GDP) and collected 43.6% of GDP in taxes and social contributions, according to the national accounts of the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (INSEE). The first figure is among the highest of advanced economies; so is the second. The gap between the two, 13.7 points of GDP, is not the deficit: government has other revenue than compulsory levies.

The question is not whether spending is high — it has been for forty years — but what moves it: public headcount, social benefits, debt interest? And on the other side: have levies kept up, and who pays them?

What the data show

Public spending as a share of GDP gained 6.6 points of percentage between 1981 (50.7%) and 2025 (57.3%), but not continuously: it rises in steps, at each recession — 56.5% in 1993, 58.0% in 2009, 61.7% in 2020 — then slowly comes down without ever regaining its previous level. Between 2010 and 2019 it averaged 57.4%.

Compulsory levies followed another slope: 40.1% in 1981, a peak at 45.3% in 2017, 43.6% in 2025 — 3.5 points in forty-four years, half as much as spending. The difference lodged in the deficit, and in other revenue.

That other revenue — property income, sales of services, imputed contributions — represents 8.6 points of GDP in 2025: that is what separates the spending-levies gap (13.7 points) from the deficit (5.1%). Reading the gap between the two big curves as a deficit is the most frequent error on this subject.

Chart 1 of 1 · % of GDP · Period 1981-2025

Public spending and compulsory levies as a share of GDP since 1981

Have levies kept up with spending?

Reading

020406080198119861991199620012006201120162025
  • Public spending
  • Compulsory levies

What to see

  • Spending rises in steps — 1993, 2009, 2020 — and never fully comes back down.
  • Since 1999, levies have oscillated within a four-point band, between forty-one and forty-five per cent.
  • The gap between the two curves is not the deficit: it includes other revenue.

What this does not mean

  • A rise as a share of GDP is not a rise in spending: in 2009 and 2020, it was GDP that fell.

Limits · National accounts, general government, 2020 base; 2025 provisional. Source · INSEE — annual national accounts, base 2020

What has changed

What has changed since 2019 reads in two stages. The health crisis pushes spending up by 6.4 points of percentage in 2020, an unprecedented jump, financed by the deficit. Then spending recedes — 56.8% in 2023 — without returning to its 2019 level (55.3%), while levies fall back to 43.6%: the deficit, at 5.1% in 2025, is the result of this double asymmetry.

Over the long run, levies have seen three clear movements: a fall in 2009 (0.9 point) with the recession, a rapid rise from 2010 to 2013 (3.4 points) to reduce the deficit, and a fall from 2017 to 2019 (1.3 points) with the abolition of the residence tax and the transformation of contributions. Spending has never moved as fast in the downward direction.

The visible relationships

What cannot be claimed

This page does not carry the full breakdown of spending by function, nor the interest actually paid, nor the public wage bill: it therefore cannot quantify each item's contribution to the rise. It shows that headcount is stable per inhabitant and that social protection is the biggest item; it does not measure the others.

Nor does it say who pays, in the sense of the split between households, firms and generations: compulsory levies are a total, and their economic incidence — who really bears an employer contribution, a value added tax (VAT) — cannot be read in a global rate.

Finally, comparing France with other countries also requires comparing what spending finances (public or private pensions, public health or insurance); without that, a higher spending ratio says nothing about efficiency.

The events that shed light on the path

Where we stand today

In 2025: spending 57.3% of GDP, levies 43.6%, deficit 5.1% (€151.6bn). The deficit is higher than in 2019 (2.4%) with higher spending and lower levies: closing the gap will go through one, the other, or both.

What the reader can take away

French public spending is not driven by headcount, stable per inhabitant since 2010, but by social benefits — which rise at each crisis and do not come down — and, since 2022, by the return of interest. Levies kept up until 2017, then fell; the deficit is the difference.

What the reader can keep: the gap between the spending curve and the levies curve is not the deficit, and the question “who pays?” has changed its answer in thirty years — less and less wages alone, more and more all incomes, through the CSG. An account gives access to the detail: headcount, social protection, the rate cushion, the chronology of consolidations.

Sources and method

Every figure on this page is read from an identified public series, or computed from it according to the stated rule. The series are those of France ÉcoScan's catalogue, checked against their producer and frozen on the date given at the top of the page.

  • Public Spending (% GDP) — INSEE — annual national accounts, base 2020 · www.insee.fr
  • Tax Burden (% GDP) — INSEE — annual national accounts, base 2020 · www.insee.fr
  • Public Deficit (% GDP) — INSEE — annual national accounts, base 2020 · www.insee.fr
  • Public Deficit — INSEE — annual national accounts, base 2020 · www.insee.fr
  • Civil Servants — INSEE — Macroeconomic database (BDM), series 010608231, 001750105 and 001750248 (SIASP source) · bdm.insee.fr
  • Social protection — government expenditure (% GDP) — Eurostat — General government expenditure by function (gov_10a_exp) · ec.europa.eu
  • 10-year OAT yield, annual average (%) — European Central Bank (ECB) — ESCB statistics compiled by the Banque de France · data.ecb.europa.eu
  • CSG on Labour Income (%) — Legislator — Social Security Code, Art. L136-1 to L136-8; Social Security Financing Acts · www.legifrance.gouv.fr
  • Unemployment (ILO definition) — Eurostat — Unemployment by sex and age, annual data (une_rt_a) · ec.europa.eu
  • Population — INSEE — population estimates · www.insee.fr

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