France: Cost of Tax Evasion and White‐Collar Crime

In a study dedicated to the cost of crime, the Centre for Sociological Research on Law and Criminal Institutions (Cesdip) highlights the scale of white‐collar offending, such as tax evasion and economic and financial crime. In 1991 these invisible crimes cost the community dearly: tax evasion entailed lost revenues totalling Ffl38bn — equivalent to the 1991 budget deficit — while economic and financial crime represented a cost of more than Ff6bn. The cost of these offences has gone up continuously — a Ff20bn increase for tax evasion alone between 1988 and 1991. These amounts must be compared with the losses deriving from traditional crimes like thefts; in 1991 the cost of this offence was FD.5bn, that is about half that of economic and financial crime.