Washington D.C. – CNN, Apr. 13, 2026
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.
