Higher fees and taxes collected by AFSSAPS on medicines and medical devices

Article 139 of the 2004 Finance Act raises the levies allocated to the French health products safety agency (AFSSAPS): the fee for marketing authorisation applications rises from EUR 23,000 to EUR 25,400 (Public Health Code Art. L. 5121-16), the ceiling of the annual tax on proprietary medicines from EUR 3,050 to EUR 17,000 with a scale of at least five bands based on sales (Art. L. 5121-17), the tax on filing advertisements from EUR 460 to EUR 510 (Art. L. 5122-5), and the rate of the tax on medical devices from 0.15% to 0.24% (Art. L. 5211-5-2). The fees become taxes. These provisions apply from 1 January 2004, and the annual tax and the medical device tax from the taxes due for 2003.