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| Europe |
| French Try Greater Than 100% Taxes On Wealthy |
| 2006-07-21 |
| Eurosclerosis: For those seeking an elegant and romantic milieu, France has long been a favorite destination. Recently, however, it's become more of a departure point for a certain class of Frenchmen: millionaires. According to French government data, at least one millionaire on the average leaves France every day. It's not that they're finding other places more charming than their native terroir. No, it's that France punishes its wealthiest with burdensome tax rates that sometimes reach as high as 72%. Many of those leaving aren't just the nouveau riche. Even some old-line families who have guided French business and industry for decades are also saying au revoir. In addition to high income, capital gains, inheritance and social security taxes, the wealthy French are hit with a "solidarity tax." Like the U.S.' alternative minimum tax, the solidarity tax is meant to make sure the wealthy pay their fair share for France's out-of-control welfare state. In some cases that levy can actually exceed a person's income, making it one of the great incentive killers of all time. Of course, the Socialists responsible for these punitive levies say that the wealthy who leave are avoiding their responsibilities. Someone should tell them the French Revolution and its dream of radical economic egalitarianism has been over for more than two centuries. Or didn't that occur to them as they celebrated Bastille Day last week? True equality, unreachable under any conditions, will never be achieved through a redistributionist system. At least some Frenchmen recognize this. "This tendency to take from the rich and give to the poor, which is supposed to solve all the problems in France, is ruining the country," said Alain Marchand, a London-based consultant who helps relocate French business executives, in an interview with the The Washington Post. The Post foreign service reports that Eric Pinchet, who has written a French tax guide, reckons that revenues from the solidarity tax are roughly $2.6 billion a year. That's a trifling amount, especially considering that Pinchet believes the tax has cost France more than $125 billion in capital flight since 1998. An economy grows slowly — or is ruined, as Marchand, who left France himself six years ago, might say — when investment is choked off. To say nothing of the loss of a nation's brightest and hardest-working citizens. Entrepreneur, after all, is a French word. Both the rich and the not-so-rich who are young, skilled and ambitious are leaving for countries where the labor markets are less regulated by the state and taxes not as burdensome. That exodus might help explain why real GDP in France has grown just 1.5% a year on average since 2000 — lagging the rest of Europe. Unless these trends are reversed soon through labor law reform — which was tried and failed this spring — and deep tax cuts, France's economy will continue its steady decline. |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #23 Based on his other mutterings, Adamsky is a populist, not a socialist. |
| Posted by: Fordesque 2006-07-21 21:17 |
| #22 The wealthy beat the taxes because they can. BS. Classic socialist rant. The highest-earning groups pay a share of taxes much greater than their share of income The highest-earning 20% of taxpayers earn less than half of all income but pay more than four-fifths of all federal income taxes. The highest-earning one percent bears an even more disproportionate share of the income tax burden, earning 14% of all income but paying 34% of federal income taxes, more than double their income share. Because the largest share of federal income taxes is paid by the highest earners, lower-earning households bear a much smaller share of the overall income tax burden, thereby creating progressivity in the federal income tax system. However, it also means that federal revenues devoted to general government operations are particularly sensitive to changes in the income of the top earners. Source: Congressional Budget Office (http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=5324&sequence=0) |
| Posted by: Uliger Spelet1498 2006-07-21 17:24 |
| #21 BA, I've read it somewhere, but of course I can't remember anything of it, but french taxes started at a ridicoulously low level in 19th, only as "temporary measures" (imagine people getting all worked over for a 7% income tax!), got-off ground during/after WWI, and went haywire after WWII with the social sytem which drain about 50% of all salaries before any taxation is calculated. Anyway, in most developed countries, one works about 180 days a year for the State, give or take a few weeks. During Middle Ages, a serf was someone who had to work 40 days a year for his lord... Big gvt is a leftover of a 20th century marked by world wars, socialism (think keynes & social-democracy) and statism. I hope 21th will revert to less invasive and all-powerful States (think flat taxes). |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2006-07-21 13:27 |
| #20 America is worse on taxes. We are taxed over and over on our income. The wealthy beat the taxes because they can. They leave or find a way. Big government is a world constant. Middleclass get used to it. |
| Posted by: SamAdamsky 2006-07-21 13:17 |
| #19 If the French want French culture to be a contender again they should start with how the world views them. That is through whiney politicians and their movies. And French movies have not been there since the 60s. Consider how they wail at American culture which appeals the masses. The French culture program was to appeal to the elites. Guess you get what you aim for. The problem for the French elites' ego is they want admiration from the very people they raise the middle index finger to and then bitch when the salute is returned. |
| Posted by: Gromoting Jirt4324 2006-07-21 13:07 |
| #18 A nation that tries to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. - Winston Churchill |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2006-07-21 13:06 |
| #17 When has taxing oneself into prosperity ever worked? Can anyone provide example of success? What a bunch of idiots. The people who are wealthy, are also likely the ones who start, build and run the business that provide jobs. Lose the Rich, and watch everything tank. I blame the citizens that keep voting these jokers that support this nonsense into office. Probably on the dole. |
| Posted by: delphi2005 2006-07-21 12:39 |
| #16 There is something fundamentally wrong with France. They have a national film program to support French film yet the biggest French directors end up leaving the country and making films in English (Luc Bessan comes to mind). They have a rich literary history yet they do not make many movies of the works of Dumas and Verne but instead let the British and Americans bastardize these works for the world to watch. And lastly the Japanese make Samurai flicks, the Yanks make our cowboy flicks and the Britts are in love with Shakespeare and Edwardian periods. The French should be making medieval movies like they were coming out of style but for some reason they can't or won't. If the French want French culture to be a contender again they should start with how the world views them. That is through whiney politicians and their movies. And French movies have not been there since the 60s. End rant. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2006-07-21 11:57 |
| #15 Late 18th Century/Tea/Boston Harbor. Look it up. I recently read a book on taxes (forget the name off the top of my head) and I was astounded over what our forefathers went to battle over, as far as tax rates go. For example, the Boston Tea Party was started over an import (I believe) tarriff on tea of something like only 3%-4%! The colonialists were willing to go to war over that. And yet, today, with Local (sales)/State (income, mostly)/Federal (income) taxes taking up to and over 50% of our paycheck, we do nothing. Add in other "hidden" taxes (taxes on gasoline, medicare/social security witholdings + their employer "match" portions/etc.), and I bet we pay well over 50% of our paycheck to the government. Can't really fathom what French taxes are like, but this article gives me a clue. |
| Posted by: BA 2006-07-21 11:10 |
| #14 "Funny" thing is that many middle class (or lower!) people are more more asked to pay the ISF (tax on wealth), which they can't without selling their property, because of the explosion of real estate. Typical case, as shown in the media, is the retired farmer who has land and a family home/farm on a touristical area, say the île de Ré, and whose increased assets value due to specualtion brings him in the ISF tax bracket... of course, he has not enough income to pay it, and he must sell. I'll agree, this whole tax is insane, but it was invented for purely udeological purpose by the socialists, it was briefly suppressed by the "right" after shiraq's house election victory in 1986-1988, and was restored after the re-election of mitterrand. From then, the "conservatives" never dared to supress it again, as shiraq blamed his 1988 presidential defeat on that. Anyway, the pattern is always the same : since "right" was treaumatized after the 1945 epuration and the overhelming supremacy of the cultural/metapolitical left, it NEVER dare to undo what the left has done. So, sociaists and their allies do socialism, and the "right" (already statist and centralist thanks to gaullism) does... socialism. It's been going on since 1981, or even 1974, in fact. |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2006-07-21 10:52 |
| #13 Tax the Rich to feed the Poor until there are no Rich no more. I'd love to change the world, but I don't know what to do. |
| Posted by: Deacon Blues 2006-07-21 10:51 |
| #12 "From each, according to what we can get away with; to each according to whatever is "left over" after we buy mansions and luxury cars and hire all our friends-n-relatives. It's For The Children(TM)" |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2006-07-21 10:43 |
| #11 The wealthy create more wealth in the country, especially if they own buisnesses. If they are morons with a trust fund, they spend it all away and it goes into the econonmy. Strange how such a simple idea can't be grasped by socialists. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2006-07-21 10:00 |
| #10 That's the program. Punish success, reward failure. Sit back and watch natural forces take their actions. Please pass the popcorn. |
| Posted by: Elmaitle Phuter1114 2006-07-21 09:59 |
| #9 Take from the rich and give to the poor? It's more like take from the productive and give to the non productive. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2006-07-21 09:56 |
| #8 There's a nice little cottage industry of offshore jurisdictions with no extradition treaties and really nice debtor-friendly trust rules which cater to continental Europeans looking to put the money out of reach of the home government. |
| Posted by: Mike 2006-07-21 09:22 |
| #7 At least some Frenchmen recognize this. "This tendency to take from the rich and give to the poor, which is supposed to solve all the problems in France, is ruining the country," said Alain Marchand, a London-based consultant who helps relocate French business executives, in an interview with the The Washington Post. Hilderbeast, Kennedy, Kerry, Gore, McCain.... various other donks in Washington, take note. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2006-07-21 07:13 |
| #6 Robin hood robbed the sherrif of nottingham of the tax and gave it back to the serfs. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2006-07-21 07:00 |
| #5 FBR (French Bolshvic Republic) will be the first country in Eurabia to be destroyed by the "advanced" ideas of the lazy lefto-socialist bums that run France. The economic downfall of france will trigger a bloody internal conflict between the native French and the Islamo-fascist denizens of the Ghetos in a conflagration that would tear down the foundations of Europe. |
| Posted by: Elder of Zion 2006-07-21 06:52 |
| #4 They're going to make their revolution work, by gum, even if they have to kill their nation in the process. A nation of maroons, it would seem. |
| Posted by: no mo uro 2006-07-21 06:21 |
| #3 Using a fairy tale to run a country - robin hood. Sorry way to apply "moral relativism". |
| Posted by: newc 2006-07-21 03:35 |
| #2 French are pikers. During the late 70's, a Swedish writer of children's stories managed to position herself to be in a 105% marginal tax bracket. That was too much for even the stoic Swedes and was a national scandal. |
| Posted by: RWV 2006-07-21 01:36 |
| #1 Belgium has become quite the little haven in the process. |
| Posted by: Fordesque 2006-07-21 01:29 |