ABSTRACT
The French tax regime restricts the eligibility of several public-interest actors from a certain degree of economic activity from philanthropic tax benefits by misconstruing them as profit seeking. The French legal history of the doctrine of public interest originally refers to the doctrine of causes – a list of subjects treated as public interest. In the 1990s, European regulations implemented a fair competition paradigm, limiting state subsidies to economic actors. This prompted the French tax administration to implement the 4Ps (product, public, price, publicity) rule to assess eligibility for philanthropic activities. However, the doctrine of causes and fair competition assessments often coexist. Eventually, the principle of sectorisation was introduced to help organisations retain philanthropic benefits without creating a separate legal person. However, the conditions for implementing sectorisation are restrictive, while the economic and social dimensions are often intertwined. This study suggests measures to redefine and regulate public interest in the French context. First, organisations meeting the three cumulative conditions of disinterested governance, public-interest purposes and non-competitive projects should be presumed to be of public interest. Second, philanthropic resources should be sectorised to indicate potential costs. Finally, the statutory provisions of the French tax code on philanthropy should be amended.
