By Joseph Ataman, CNN
Paris (CNN) — There’s no escape from the tax collector. At least that’s what Benjamin Brière must have felt after his return from three and half years as a hostage in Iran when he got that message that we all dread: he hadn’t filed his taxes.
The return of two French detainees from Iran this month has highlighted Brière’s run-in with French bureaucracy upon his own return to France in 2023, sparking a public apology this weekend from the French tax authority.
During his imprisonment, he did not complete his annual tax declarations for four years running, he said in an interview with French outlet Le Nouvel Obs in late 2025.
“But why sir?” he recounted the official from France’s tax authority (DGFiP) asking him as he sought to restart his life. “Even in prison you can do it.”
“Not in Iran,” Brière retorted, adding that the official then asked why his family had not done the declarations on his behalf.
Brière told the Journal du Net website last week that for the first year of his detention he had no contact at all with his family; in the second year he was given some 15 minutes by phone every four to six weeks. Back taxes evidently weren’t on his mind.
The Frenchman was travelling through Iran alone in 2020 when he was detained by security forces and later accused of espionage and propaganda against the regime, according to CNN affiliate BFMTV. He was sentenced to eight years and eight months in prison.
The response from the tax official who initially spoke with Brière was “unacceptable,” the DGFiP said in a post on X on Sunday, and the failure of support was “entirely contrary to our values.”
Brière’s situation was subsequently taken care of by an official in another region, the DGFIP said, adding that it has put measures in place to ensure no repeat of this situation.
France has one of the highest top income tax rates in the European Union and Briere’s treatment sparked a flurry of social media commentary in France, with some poking fun at the taxman’s pursuit of the government’s dues.
“Frankly, for the next hostages, we drop the diplomacy and the special forces. We send in a squad from the DGFiP that’ll bring back the taxpayer in a flash from any jail anywhere in the world,” one user posted on X.
Brière is campaigning for hostages to be given a special legal status to better protect people like him. While he said the French government took care of his hospital treatment upon his release, he said there was no official administrative support for his family during his detention nor for him upon his return to France.
French citizens Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris returned to France in early April after a more than three-year-long ordeal in Iran.
Speaking to journalists, Kohler said that the pair had “lived daily horrors” at the infamous Evin prison in Tehran, and thanked everyone who had helped to secure their release.
Kohler and Paris were accused of spying for France and Israel and sentenced to lengthy prison terms in October 2025. The French government said they were held as state hostages.
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