“Tax us”, implore the rich French, in an appeal that will be published tomorrow in the weekly Nouvel Observateur. In the evening Nicolas Sarkozy should please them. The maneuver in August will be presented, necessary to bring the public deficit back from 5,7% of GDP at the end of the year to 3% in 2013. And the Scrooges of France should be the most taxed, through a sort of solidarity contribution, from impose on the 30 richest families in the country.
They have already admitted that the decision is sacrosanct. How good they are. Then, however, certain details make your arms drop. One of all concerns Liliane Bettencourt, who controls the cosmetics giant L'Oréal. The elderly lady is one of the sixteen signatories of the generous appeal. Too bad that last year you found yourself in the vortex of a family-political-financial scandal. Which brought out heavy tax evasion against her. And undeclared overseas assets, like an island in the Seychelles. A few weeks ago Madame was forced to disburse 30 million euros to the French state. How good.
How good are the other super rich too. The Irpef equivalent rate applied to the highest income bracket in France is 41%, which is already lower than that of other European countries for the same level of income. But the problem is that, thanks to various tax niches (as in France the deductions granted to certain professions or in specific cases are called, a tangle of rules that make the fortune of accountants) the richest 0,01% of the population pay in in reality 17% of Irpef and 0,001% just 15. In short, there are margins for being generous. Here I am.
