France's draconian move to collect more taxes is not only prompting high-profile wealthy people to flee, such as actor Gerard Depardieu, Europe's richest man, Bernard Arnau, and optician chain tycoon, Alain Afflelou, but has been judged "unfair" by France's Constitutional Council. Moreover, a top administrative court determined that a marginal tax rate higher than 66.66 percent on a single household risked being considered as confiscatory.
Taxes on some wealthy French top 100 pct of income: paper
(Reuters) – More than 8,000 French households' tax bills topped 100 percent of their income last year, the business newspaper Les Echos reported on Saturday, citing Finance Ministry data.
The newspaper said that the exceptionally high level of taxation was due to a one-off levy last year on 2011 incomes for households with assets of more than 1.3 million euros ($1.67 million).
President Francois Hollande's Socialist government imposed the tax surcharge last year, shortly after taking office, to offset the impact of a rebate scheme created by its conservative predecessor to cap an individual's overall taxation at 50 percent of income.
The government has been forced to redraft a proposed bill to levy a temporary 75 percent tax on earnings over 1 million euros, which had been one of Hollande's campaign pledges.
The Constitutional Council has judged such a high rate of taxation to be unfair, leaving the government to rehash it to hit companies rather than individuals…Keep reading: Taxes on some wealthy French top 100 pct of income: paper | Reuters.
Actor Gerard Depardieu compares Vladimir Putin to Pope John Paul II
French actor and newly-minted Russian citizen Gerard Depardieu on Saturday compared President Vladimir Putin to the late Pope John Paul II and said the ex-KGB agent is what Russia needs as a leader.
Depardieu is preparing to shoot a new film in Moscow and the Chechen capital Grozny — a city rebuilt from the ground up after nearly two decades of war — as he settles in to his new role as global ambassador of Russian culture.
The hulking actor received his new citizenship during a dinner with Putin — object of scorn from Russia’s youth-driven opposition movement — in January after getting into a fight with the French authorities over a new 75-percent tax on the super-rich…
The straw-haired actor explained that he simply had to leave France because he could not live by French President Francois Hollande’s policies and that he felt more comfortable with former leader Nicolas Sarkozy.
“I liked Sarkozy because everyone was against him,” Depardieu said.
Full article: Actor Gerard Depardieu compares Vladimir Putin to Pope John Paul II / The Raw Story
