This is what you signed up for, Frenchmen. The French government under new socialist President Francois Hollande has approved a 75 percent tax rate for the richest in the country and guess what? It doesn't even begin to solve economic problems.
The budget, approved by France's cabinet on Friday, said that the creation of a new 75 percent tax on millionaires and higher marginal tax rates on high earners would raise some 530 million euros next year.
The new budget also hikes taxes on businesses and investments. Back in May when Hollande was elected, French entrepreneurs and the wealthy began fleeing the country, knowing their wealth would be redistributed in a huge way.
Jeremie Le Febvre, the 30-year-old founder of private equity marketing-services firm TBG Capital Advisors, plans to move to Singapore from Paris this year.
Not because of President-elect Francois Hollande’s pledge to boost taxes; rather for what Hollande’s victory says about how wealth is viewed in France, the entrepreneur said.
“What’s really driving my departure is the fact that I don’t share the values that emerged during the election, the rejection of ambition and success,” he said in an interview. “It’s part of France’s difficult relationship with money, but it has reached a new level. Even if it’s utopian, I need to believe for me and my descendants that the sky is the limit.”
Hollande’s rhetoric against wealth and finance is prompting some in France to consider leaving, and European rivals are welcoming them. “Bienvenue a Londres,” or welcome to London, Mayor Boris Johnson quipped in January. Switzerland and Belgium have been just as warm.
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This week at the UN General Assembly in New York, Hollande didn't endorse a particular candidate in the U.S. but he sure dropped some huge hints as to who he identifies with more. Hint: it's not Mitt Romney.
"Who do you think?"
"Are you aware that Mitt Romney never ceases to attack socialist Europe at his campaign rallies?” …
“Yes, that’s why I’ll be careful not to say anything at all on this subject because, as you’d imagine, if a socialist supported one of these two candidates, that could cost him dear,” he explained. …
“So I suppose I should endorse Mitt Romney,” Hollande joked. “But I won’t.”
Bonne chance!
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