Who owns what?

How much exists

What France owns, and owes

At the end of 2024, everything owned in France, less everything owed, was worth €19,922bn: 6.8 years of GDP. Households own €15,242bn of it, 76.5%, or 9.1 years of all public spending.

Companies look poor because national accounts record the shares they issue as a debt to their owners: their value sits mostly in the hands of households, directly or through funds and insurers. General government owns roads, schools, hospitals and land worth €2,903bn, more than its net debts, so its net worth is positive: €765.9bn. The national accounts record no liability for the pensions general government will pay: contributors do not own what they paid and the law can change how pensions are computed, Insee explains. Their supplementary table puts the pensions already earned in all compulsory schemes at €9,964bn, estimated at the end of 2021, €1,317bn, estimated of it in the State's scheme for its civil servants and military, discounted at the real rate common to the European Union's member states, on which the figure depends.

The nation's wealth is its real assets: buildings, equipment and land worth €20,006bn, a little more than its net worth. Financial claims between French sectors cancel out; what is left is the net position towards the rest of the world, €−84.2bn. Insee's balance sheets do not split that position by instrument and counterpart, so how much of it is shares and how much is debt is not shown here.

What households own

Households hold €17,345bn of assets and owe €2,104bn. Housing and the land under it is €8,982bn; life insurance €1,859bn; deposits and savings accounts €2,108bn; shares, most of them in unlisted family firms, €1,753bn.

Money is a small part of it

Money, the deposits people can spend, is a small part of wealth. French residents held €1,265bn in sight deposits in December 2024, and €2,979bn counting savings accounts and other near-money (M3). France's contribution to the euro area's M3 was €3,311bn, of €16,764bn for the whole euro area.

Stocks are valued at market prices at the end of the year by Insee's balance sheets (comptes de patrimoine), semi-final for 2024. Flows, like GDP and spending, are over a year: the bars compare a year of output and spending with what has been accumulated.

Who owns it

Wealth is held at the top

Wealth is more concentrated than income. The richest 10% of adults hold 59.9%, estimated of it and the poorest half 4.8%, estimated (World Inequality Database). Insee's household survey finds the best-endowed 10% of households holding 47%, estimated of gross wealth; surveys miss the largest fortunes, which the WID adds from tax and national-accounts data.

The top 1% holds 27.7%, estimated of net wealth in the WID's estimate, 15%, estimated of gross wealth in Insee's survey.

By income, and by age

The site's other pages rank people by living standard. No official source publishes wealth by tenth of living standard; the nearest is Insee's split of households into four equal groups by disposable income. The quarter with the highest incomes holds 54.7%, estimated of net wealth, the lowest quarter 8.5%, estimated.

Each chart uses one ranking, named under it: by wealth, by household income or by age. They are not comparable with one another, nor with the tenths of living standard used elsewhere on this site. Income quarters rank households by their total disposable income, not per consumption unit, so large households rank higher than their living standard would put them.

By shares of wealth

Each group holds the same share of wealth

Rank adults by net wealth and cut the ranking where each group holds a tenth of WID's total, €14,488bn, estimated. The first tenth of wealth is spread over 32.3 million, estimated adults, 60.9%, estimated of all adults; the ninth over 181,963, estimated adults. The last tenth is held by 17,975, estimated adults with 4.4%, estimated and the richest 0.001%, 530, estimated adults, with 5.6%, estimated, an average of €1,525,804,411, estimated each.

Groups of adults ranked by net wealth (WID).

The groups are WID's 2024 estimates for adults aged 20 or more, a couple's wealth split equally, net personal wealth as WID defines it. WID publishes amounts in euros of 2025; the page converts them to current 2024 euros with WID's price index for 2024, 0.9884, estimated, so that they can be set beside the debt and spending of 2024. WID publishes the ranking down to the richest 0.001%, about 530, estimated adults; between its published ranks the shares are interpolated linearly, and the last group is WID's own, so no group rests on an extrapolation. The wealth at each group's lowest rank is interpolated between WID's thresholds, so it is approximate.

Beyond WID's last rank, the split depends on an assumed tail. If the ranking continued as a strict Pareto tail with WID's coefficient there, 1.93, estimated, the curve would give about 19, hypothetical adults for 1% of all net wealth; a generalized tail fitted to WID's last three ranks, of shape 0.95, estimated, would give less than one. For a group of a few hundred people, such counts from a curve have no literal meaning: they show that the split below WID's last rank is not determined, which is why the table stops there.

Challenges ranks the 500 largest fortunes at €1,228bn, estimated, or 8.5%, estimated of WID's total, against 5.6%, estimated for WID's richest 0.001%. The magazine ranks fortunes, WID adults, and the two need not value the same assets the same way. The comparison is neither a point of WID's ranking nor a test of it.

Insee's survey cannot draw this split: it reaches few of the largest fortunes, and its finest published group is the 1% of households with the most gross wealth. The figures here are Estimated, except the continuation beyond WID's last rank, which is Hypothetical.

Taxes proposed on the top

What the richest hold, and the taxes proposed on it

In WID's series for 2024, the richest 10% of adults hold 59.9%, estimated of net personal wealth, €8,675bn, estimated of WID's total of €14,488bn, estimated: 5.2, estimated years of public spending. Insee's survey gives the 10% of households with the most gross wealth 49.4%, estimated of households' net wealth; applied to Insee's balance-sheet total, €15,242bn, that is €7,527bn, estimated, or 4.5, estimated years. The taxes on the top tabled since 2025 follow, each with the costing of its authors or of an official body beside this site's arithmetic.

The WID construction ranks adults by net wealth, splits a couple's wealth equally and uses WID's own total; the survey construction ranks households by gross wealth, reaches few of the largest fortunes, and is applied to Insee's total, which also counts non-profit institutions serving households. They describe different groups, so neither brackets the other. For the richest 1%, the WID construction gives 27.7%, estimated, or €4,010bn, estimated; the survey construction 16%, estimated, or €2,438bn, estimated. The World Inequality Report 2026's country sheet gives 59.7%, estimated and 27.4%, estimated, the figures of WID's series for 2023.

The proposals tabled since 2025

Four taxes on the largest fortunes or incomes have been tabled or voted since 2025, and the wealth tax replaced in 2018 gives a scale. For each, the text, its base and rate, the costing by its authors or by an official body, and this site's arithmetic where the site can see the base. The arithmetic multiplies a rate by a base before any change in behaviour, valuation or exemption; the costings are their authors' estimates, made on other bases.

What the arithmetic leaves out

The arithmetic holds everything else still. It does not model how owners might respond, by moving assets or residence abroad, restructuring holdings or contesting valuations, nor how unlisted firms, which have no market price, would be valued. How a tax would be paid is also outside it: from income, deposits, borrowing or the sale of assets. Levied each year, a tax on wealth changes its own base, by its amount and by the response to it; the calculator gives the first year's yield on the end-2024 base. No source read here estimates these effects for the taxes above, so the page applies none of them.

One study measures one such response for a smaller tax: the CAE estimates that a reform raising the tax rate of the top 1% of capital-income recipients by 5.2 points, for €4bn a year, would lead 0.12%, estimated to 1.2%, estimated of them to leave France in the long run. It gives no estimate of the wealth they hold or of the response to the taxes above, so the calculator does not apply it.

The figures do not settle whether to tax wealth, at what rate or on whom. Every input is a claim with its evidence; the calculator's results are computed from them in the reader's browser, and the default case is printed in the page.

Private flows

What wealth pays and passes on, outside the State

About €300bn, estimated is passed on each year by inheritance and gifts. Households also receive €133.9bn of net financial income and €166.9bn of rents, actual and imputed, and companies keep €123.1bn of profits that belong to households. None of it goes through the State's accounts, except as the taxes below.

Groups of individuals ranked by their household's living standard (Insee).

The richest tenth receives €215.1bn of this capital income, more than the other nine together, with most of the profits kept in companies and most net financial income. Rents are spread more evenly across the tenths.

Who inherits

Half of each generation inherits less than €70,000, estimated over a lifetime, many of them nothing; the top 1% of heirs receive €4,200,000, estimated on average, net of duties. Of what children receive in a year from a parent who dies, estates and past gifts together, the largest 1% of inheritances make up 20.4%, estimated of the amount and the smallest half 5.8%, estimated (France Stratégie, from the 2010 wealth survey). Of the dwellings passed on by inheritance or gift from 2018 to 2022, 32% went to the richest fifth by living standard and 13.7% to the poorest. Gifts during life were 45%, estimated of the flow in 2006, the last year with tax records for both, against about a fifth in 1984.

Dividends to and from abroad

French companies paid €70.2bn of dividends to foreign owners in 2024, and French residents received €124.7bn from companies abroad.

What the State collects

What the State levies on it

Inheritance and gift duties raise €20.8bn: 6.9%, estimated of what is passed on. Taxes on households' capital income raise €56.5bn in 2024, an amount equal to 18.8%, estimated of their financial and rental income of 2023.

Both ratios set aggregates that do not match against each other, so neither is the rate on taxable capital income, and no source read here gives a same-year taxable base to compute one. Insee's figure for rents includes the rent owner-occupiers are deemed to pay themselves, which no one is taxed on; the taxes include those on capital gains, which are not in the income; and the taxes are for 2024, the income for 2023. Against financial income alone, the taxes come to 42.2%, estimated. Profits kept in companies pay corporate tax, part of the €84.7bn taxed on companies' capital income.

On the stock itself

Taxes on the stock of wealth, property taxes, inheritance duties, the real-estate wealth tax and taxes on property sales, raise €108.8bn a year. Recurrent property taxes, the taxe foncière above all, raise €58.7bn; the real-estate wealth tax (IFI) raises €2.7bn.

Taxes are DG TAXUD's classification by economic function for 2024, the same as on the Taxes page. A ratio of a year's tax to a stock is not a rate anyone pays. It says how much of the stock the State collects in a year. Inheritance duties are set against an economic estimate of the flow; declared estates are 35% to 40% smaller (CAE).

What is missing

What this page does not show

• Wealth by tenth of living standard. Insee publishes wealth by wealth decile, by income quarter and by age, not by the tenths of living standard used on the Public money page, so wealth is not shown beside them.
• Inheritance by group. The diagram ranks heirs by the size of what they receive, from France Stratégie's ten fractile means of children's inheritances in its simulation of the 2010 wealth survey, and spreads the whole flow, gifts and spouses included, the same way. No source splits the amounts passed on by living standard or by age: Insee publishes who has inherited and how many dwellings each fifth receives, not the euros each group receives, and the tax administration has published no survey of declared estates since 2006.
• Who pays capital income. Interest, dividends and rents are paid by companies, the State and tenants; Insee attributes what households receive, not what each group pays.
• Banknotes. Currency is issued for the euro area and not split by country, so France's M1 here is sight deposits only.
• A threshold of the reader's own. The calculator's own setting applies a rate to a group's whole net wealth; the thresholds of the proposals are read on WID's ranking for their cases, not offered as a setting.
• The top beyond the richest 0.001%. WID publishes the ranking down to its richest 0.001% of adults, about 530 people; below that size, how wealth is split depends on an assumed tail.
• The 1945 levy. The ordinance of 15 August 1945 created an impôt de solidarité nationale, a one-off levy on capital and on wealth gained during the war; this page does not quantify its rates or its yield.
• The external position by instrument. Insee's balance sheets give the nation's net financial position but not its split into shares, debt securities and loans with the rest of the world; that split is in the Banque de France's international investment position, which this page does not use.