Taken together, do household tax burdens and benefits have a more or less progressive nature in 2010 than twenty years previously? To shed light on this question we apply the socio-fiscal legislations of 1990 and 2010 to the same representative sample of French households in 2010. Overall, the core of the monetary redistribution system, namely income tax and benefits, has become less progressive, while upstream from the taxation process, social contributions have gained in progressivity. Income tax has seen its weight diminish and has become far less progressive, a trend that can largely be ascribed to changes in its rates and, more marginally, to an increase in the number of “tax loopholes”. Similarly, social benefits appear to be less redistributive than they were in 1990. They have most often been increased in line with inflation and have thus grown less quickly than the average incomes of the population, affecting their ability to reduce inequalities. Conversely, the financing of social protection has been completely overhauled and these changes have worked in favour of progressivity. Contributions based on income as a whole, such as the CSG and CRDS, have replaced contributions based solely on earned income. Social contribution exemptions for low wage earners have also gradually been strengthened. The overall product of these opposite trends in the system's progressivity is however difficult to determine. According to the hypotheses used in the four scenarios developed in this article, overall progressivity of the socio-fiscal system did not undergo a major shift between 1990 and 2010. However, the analysis presented here does not take account of either wealth taxes or company taxes, the changes to which might have had a greater effect on high-income households.