Paris —
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…