Despite the government's denials, tax pressure is increasing insidiously in many sectors. In pharmacy, the reduction in production taxes “was more than offset by taxes specific to our sector,” laments an industrialist.
In order to avoid an uncontrolled increase in expenses linked to the consumption of medicines, the government adopted this tool more than twenty years ago. This is a contribution due by pharmaceutical laboratories when their overall turnover exceeds a certain amount set each year. Until 2021, this contribution to the Health Insurance budget was insignificant - of the order of 127 million euros in 2019, and even zero in 2020.