On Sunday, April 12, the Directorate General of Public Finances publicly regretted the reception given to Benjamin Brière, this former French detainee in Iran arrested in 2020 and released in May 2023 after nearly three years behind bars.
The man recounted that upon his return, while trying to get his life back on track, he was asked why he hadn't declared his income during his captivity. The remark, almost purely bureaucratic in the strictest sense of the word, caused outrage: according to him, an agent even told him that "in prison" the declaration was still required, possibly through family, whereas he explains that he had only rare contact with his relatives.
When the administration responds in automatic mode
What the French tax authorities (DGFiP) are conceding is that the initial exchange was "abnormal" and the initial handling "inappropriate." The word is out, bluntly: the response is deemed "unacceptable." In its message, the administration refers to an "exceptional" case and implicitly admits what every citizen already knows but always discovers with a slight shudder when it happens to them: faced with a human situation, the machine can respond like a form. It maintains that this episode does not align with its "values," without going into detail about the instructions or internal corrections.
The subsequent events are more reassuring: the case was reportedly taken over in another department, with an appointment scheduled with the head of the tax office, and a "quick" regularization. Benjamin Brière also mentions other issues, notably with France Travail (the French employment agency), stating that he doesn't appear in certain information systems, a classic symptom of a return to civilian life encountering databases. A fundamental question remains, rarely asked unless it directly affects us: when a French citizen returns from an administrative and diplomatic limbo, does the State truly know how to make an exception, or does it reflexively continue to request the missing information?
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