France To Raise Top Tax Rate To Shocking 75%

[Makarov]

Originally Posted by Jacks

Where's that ignore button?

Edit: nm, found it.

Where's that self destruct button?

EDIT: nm, found it... BOOM!

[Wormius]

nm

[mykalberta]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

Per my above post, Sam Walton was facing income taxes of ~90% in 1962. That didn't suck his motivation away from launching a wildly successful business.

Here's a graph from wikipedia showing the US tax rate for the top income bracket over the years:

What is the top tax rate they are talking about there?

<250K <1mil ?

[troutman]

What this is really about - chasing away wealthy men, so normal men can have a shot at super-hot French women.

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by mykalberta

What is the top tax rate they are talking about there?

<250K <1mil ?

The top bracket applied to income earned over the first $200k during most of the years between 1942 and 1980. That figure doesn't take inflation into account.

[BloodFetish]

Pfft. Rich French people. Let them eat cake!

<removed>

[blankall]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

The top bracket applied to income earned over the first $200k during most of the years between 1942 and 1980. That figure doesn't take inflation into account.

Wikipedia has a good chart with the highest marginal tax rates and adjusted income over time:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1942

[BlackEleven]

France cares about rich people about the same amount that the United States cares about poor people...

[Nehkara]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_..._United_States

[Nehkara]

So basically France is channeling the USA from the years of 1965 to 1981.

[Jacks]

Little update:

Bernard Arnault, France’s richest man, seeks Belgian citizenship
http://www.euronews.com/2012/09/08/b...n-citizenship/

The world’s fourth richest man, Frenchman Bernard Arnault, the boss of luxury goods giant LVMH, is seeking Belgian citizenship.

For all but three of his 63 years he has been domiciled in France. In 1981 after François Mitterrand became president he left for a brief sojourn in New York.

The news was broken in the Belgian press, but Arnault has denied he is following the example of some 2000 to 5000 of his compatriots who choose to pay Belgian, rather then French rates of income tax.

“It’s true, he asked for Belgian nationality in August. He’s transmitted his file, and you know that procedure demands that a number of different authorities including the Federal Justice department and the foreign office now give us their opinions. It’s the law,” says the president of the Belgian Naturalisation Commission Georges Dallemagne.

One of President François Holland’s flagship policies is a proposed 75% tax on all income over one million euros a year, but Arnault says he will remain a fiscal resident of France. He says the nationality demand is for business and personal reasons, but has been a vocal critic of the supertax.

He said he will still be paying French taxes, as soon as his Belgian citizenship gets approved I bet that changes.

As a side note, one of the daily newspaper's ran a headline “Get lost, rich #######.”
http://journal.liberation.fr/publica...on/1029/#!/0_0

[IliketoPuck]

Originally Posted by Nehkara

Well, as has been pointed out in this thread, the US at various times in its history has had a top tax rate near, at, or in excess of this "shocking" change in France.

Honestly, I think the US needs badly to do this but their politics is so locked up and corrupted that it would be impossible.

Not to single you out, I just wanted to point out a few things after reading through the frist couple pages of this thread, and your post was as good a point to start as any.

When it comes to taxation, if you raise the rate too high, it has the opposite effect of raising revenues, for many of the reasons mentioned previously in this thread. The key to effectively managing social programs can be summed up pretty simply by Clinton's speech the other night: "arithmetic".

France is a highly socialist state, and the vast majority of the country has an entitled attitude. 75 percent tax on the super wealthy will do nothing but encourage various forms of tax evasion.

In the US, there needs to be large over hauls to plenty of things. I think a good starting point is with HMO's, lobbyists, and other draining and inefficient programs that cost taxpayers billions each year. A reformed taxation system there would help as well, but it all comes down to the arithmetic argument

Can't fix things over night, but simply raising taxes en-masse is not the fix all to deficits that many people think.

[Azure]

And you know Belgium would LOVE it if all the rich people in France became citizens.

[Azure]

Oh look, the people of France aren't happy.

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-f...he-face-2012-9

In a BVA poll, 55 percent of the respondents were dissatisfied with President François Hollande’s efforts to tackle the economic crisis. By comparison, only 31 percent were dissatisfied with Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007 at the end of his honeymoon. Devastatingly, for a socialist: 57 percent believed that he didn’t distribute the “efforts” equitably—same as Sarkozy, the president of the rich.

[Jacks]

They found out that taxing the rich people 75% wouldn't fix all their problems. Who knew?

So much for the campaign promises that they could increase social spending, lower the retirement age and give everyone a pony.

[Azure]

Big surprise here.

France’s government indicated that it would retreat on plans to raise taxes on capital gains in its 2013 budget after it caused an uproar among small businesses and entrepreneurs, according to a variety of reporting, including this from Reuters, this from AFP, this at CNBC and this on Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

President Francois Hollande’s government last week unveiled a package of tax hikes and spending cuts aimed at saving €30-billion next year. Among the proposed measures were increases in capital gains tax on equity sales that would hit entrepreneurs hard. Entrepreneurs who sell their businessses would pay capital gains tax at a significantly higher rate.

Small businesses were incensed, saying it would discourage investment, business creation and innovation. A group calling itself “Les Pigeons” – French for ‘suckers’ – turned to social media to campaign against the hikes.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/repor...rticle4589043/

[bizaro86]

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to get the most feathers with the least hissing

Jean Baptiste Colbert, Minister of Finance under King Louis XIV of France in the 1600s

[Cowperson]

Money is like a river. It flows the easiest course and has no friends or loyalties. It's brutally honest. When France puts up a dam, the money starts flowing to Belgium.

Cowperson

[Thor]

Problem in France like everywhere else is the amount of tax dodging and tricks wealthy people have been employing ever since people started to use currency in a tax system.

The fix isn't this ludicrous 75% but to rather stop loopholes and fix tax codes. In EU its endlessly more complex with such a tiny area with so many nations, so many tax codes and then joining it up into a economic union as well.

[chemgear]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-1...nch-court.html

A court’s rejection of President Francois Hollande’s 75 percent millionaire tax shows the limits on his ability to tap high earners, even as the ruling is unlikely to attract investors and executives back to France.