French Budget Hits the Rich - 75% "Super Tax"

[C. Flower]

Hollande's budget today looks for 20 billion in extra taxes on the better off, and 10 billion in cuts, mainly from a jobs freeze.

We are constantly being told that there is no alternative to the regressive "hit the poor to save the rich" approach of the Troika-style budgets. It will be interesting to see how the French do.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...88R0AK20120928

Socialist President Francois Hollande unveiled higher levies on business and a 75-percent tax for the super-rich on Friday in a 2013 budget aimed at showing France has the fiscal rigor to remain at the core of the euro zone.

The package aims to recoup 30 billion euros ($39 billion) for the public purse with a goal of narrowing the deficit to 3.0 percent of national output next year from 4.5 percent this year - France's toughest single belt-tightening in 30 years.

But the budget dismayed business and pro-reform lobbyists by preferring tax hikes and a simple freeze of France's high public spending to attacking ministerial budgets as Spain did this week in its battle to avoid an international bailout.

[barrym]

Populist - it isn't at all clear how much the 75% will raise. Socialist President....but better than Sarko, still on honeymoon.

OTOH, France is in the same sh1t as the rest of us, only difference is they may recover sooner because they are diversified, a lot of the wealth comes from high value products made in low cost economies.

B

[MPB]

No problem with the wealth tax, but how they think paying people the same is a saving of 10 billion is beyond me. Voodoo economics.

Note, he cut the budgets of public sector depts but not the pay of those providing the reduced service. So same pay for less work.

Again, as is the same all over Europe, the private sector get to pay for their own cuts and the cuts in the public sector.

It obviously cannot last.

We don,t earn it, we cannot borrow it, unless you are a bank they won,t print it, where do you think it is going to come from?

And of course the ordinary public sector worker is unknowingly protecting, overpaid civil servants and corrupt bankers.

[Dr. FIVE]

twill be a good experiment whatever a happens, could go some way to normalise a few shades of radical policy.
And regardless who is running the show in France, division between the creditors is good for us.

[Apjp]

twill be a good experiment whatever a happens, could go some way to normalise a few shades of radical policy.
And regardless who is running the show in France, division between the creditors is good for us.

I would echo that. Between now and the time when either things kick off here or we get this latest shower out on their arses, any external events that divide creditors is good for us. I read in the IT that France wants to give Ireland a debt write off as well. You'd wonder could we be looking at Germany, the Benelux countries and Finland leaving the euro rather than the rest of us. It seems he's sticking to enough of his promises anyways, unlike the capitulating Gilmore led treason party.

[Apjp]

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...324605357.html France apparently to clash with Germany over Irish debt issue.

[fluffybiscuits]

twill be a good experiment whatever a happens, could go some way to normalise a few shades of radical policy.
And regardless who is running the show in France, division between the creditors is good for us.

Well as RBB and Co advocated, this could be a start of seeing how such a policy could be implemented. If the French make a mistake we could then find out how to rectify such a policy

[ang]

German protesters calling for a tax on the wealthy and FTT -

http://www.euronews.com/2012/09/29/g...s-on-the-rich/

[Saoirse go Deo]

The tall poppies must be in a tizzy...

Merest suggestion of such a tax here has one bashed over the head with doomsday scenarios about everyone shifting their money abroad (they do that anyway says I).

[C. Flower]

German protesters calling for a tax on the wealthy and FTT -

http://www.euronews.com/2012/09/29/g...s-on-the-rich/

Now everyone is going to want one ....

[TotalMayhem]

Chillax, folks... by the time this insanity is passed into law the every last one of the super rich will have their money moved to some safe haven or other and the tax intake from those fortunes will be even less than it is now. But hey, Dutchie, the champion of the workers is a man true to his word, eh?

[Baron von Biffo]

Chillax, folks... by the time this insanity is passed into law the every last one of the super rich will have their money moved to some safe haven or other and the tax intake from those fortunes will be even less than it is now. But hey, Dutchie, the champion of the workers is a man true to his word, eh?

Any chance we might make a few quid out of this?

[Slim Buddha]

Any chance we might make a few quid out of this?

No chance. Toblerone always trumps Tayto in this, as in so much else

[DCon]

No chance. Toblerone always trumps Tayto in this, as in so much else

Maybe they will get Irish citizenship, then be non resident for tax purposes.

Boom! No tax to be paid

[Slim Buddha]

Maybe they will get Irish citizenship, then be non resident for tax purposes.

Boom! No tax to be paid

It is in the power of the government to do something about that.
This government chooses not to do that