When Legal Intermediation Creates Distrust of the Law: The Market for Tax Rebates in French Real Estate

Abstract

Since the 1990s, the French government has offered tax exemptions for people who buy property and rent it out for at least nine years. This legal framework, centered on incentives, can be considered a new kind of (de)regulation of housing policy, triggering a multiplication of private intermediaries devoted to finding clients for tax exemptions. Based on interviews with 28 investors who feel they have been abused (many of them have started legal proceedings against professionals from whom they bought a property), this study provides a new entry for analyzing legal intermediation, showing that it does not affect all laypeople in the same way, especially when looking at the latter’s social and economic resources. We analyze how and with what devices professionals, whose commercial practices are not fully regulated by law, rely on the law for the success of their transactions, especially with taxpayers who have money to become investors but who are not rich enough to pay for the services of a tax professional. We argue that the ability to resist the appeal of putting money into investments that turned out risky depends on investors’ social and economic resources. Finally, we analyze how the process of legal intermediation described in this chapter impacts investors’ legal consciousness and creates distrust toward the law.

Citation

Herlin-Giret, C. and Spire, A. (2019), "When Legal Intermediation Creates Distrust of the Law: The Market for Tax Rebates in French Real Estate", Legal Intermediation (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 81), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 45-67. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1059-433720190000081003