Banks will later hit holders of duplicate savings accounts

Holders of several savings accounts in different banks will be able to breathe another year. This duplication system is prohibited but the government rejects the obligation of control by the banks.

The decree appeared on Saturday, December 27 in the Official Journal: the obligation for banks to systematically check whether a customer has duplicates of the same tax-exempt booklet is postponed by a year and a half. This verification was to take place from 1^East January 2026, it is finally postponed and will not take place before mid-2027.

In 2025, it is prohibited to hold several Livret A books, popular savings booklets or sustainable and solidarity development booklets, to avoid exceeding the deposit ceilings imposed by law. But controls vary from product to product. Since 2013, when a saver requests the opening of a Livret A account, the bank has been required to systematically check with the administration that the customer does not already have one in another bank, which is not the case for other regulated savings products. A decree provided for generalizing this control obligation no later than 1^East January 2026… it is this deadline which is pushed back to July 2027.

To justify its decision, the government cites purely technical reasons. The Ministry of Economy and Finance explains that this shift is intended to strengthen the control system. “Necessary operational optimization”they say at Bercy. In summary: the implementation of automated control between banks is not ready and requires more complex technical developments than expected.

The French Banking Federation recognizes that, to control the holding of several identical booklets, banks cannot share information concerning their customers with each other and are obliged to go through the tax administration, a real gas factory. But at a time when the State, lacking money, is looking for all possible sources of income, the noose is tightening on the saver and the public authorities are giving themselves a little more than an additional year to make the system truly effective. As a reminder: the French now hold some 600 billion euros in their tax-free savings accounts… that is to say, money invested on which they do not pay taxes.