to be glad that Hollande has finally introduced his 75% income tax rate?

[longfingernails]

Now even more of the best and brightest French people will be driven away, and London is a natural destination for them. Also we are able to see what a disaster Red Ed style socialism is, without having to experience it ourselves.

An arithmetical note for our French friends: 75% of 0 is 0.

Marzipanned - then they are berated for not using the services. People get torn to shreds for Private School and Private Healthcare usage on here. I've never seen anything like it.

It also seems to me that people can't grasp the concept that a lot of people have made money by working really hard and sacrificing a lot at the start of their climb. Also for some people the money they have is the money they need to survive, and they may not continue to earn this forever and would like something to live on and pass onto their families?

Not everyone with money is a megalomaniac hiding in a Volcano lair and wiping their arse on fresh kittens.

YANBU, OP. To me it seems probable that the Laffer Curve is absolutely bang on, but I've never seen a proof of concept. I'm glad it's not my homeland doing the experiment though

I personally know several French citizens who have sold up and left France because of the tax and political situation. They are affluent, but not millionaires or earning at a 75% tax level. They work in normal, higher management roles.
They have left because Hollande is signalling that he does not want people to create and keep personal wealth. It's not just the 75% tax, it's lots of other taxes and policies. So now they are essentially paying no French tax at all. So France loses both the intellectual and financial capital. They are paying UK tax instead! Lucky us!

The problem with such a punitive tax rate is that people have a huge incentive to engage in tax avoidance.

Be it like Gérard Depardieu who have chosen to leave the country altogether or Beckham who decided it simply wasn't worth the aggro so donated it all to charity. You then end up with as LFN say 75% of nothing.

And to those who say only a few people will leave. That's completely missing the point. There aren't actually that many rich people. Those that there are generally pay a shit load of income tax. No they really do! It only takes a few of them to leave or find some loopholes for it to blow a massive hole in your tax receipts.

Take for example the UK. The top 1% pay nearly 25% of all of our income tax with the only 9% of earners making up the other 25%. You only need a few people in the top 1% to leave or avoid tax to see how that buggers things up for you.

It's the stupid side of socialism which puts ideology above human nature. And time & time again history has shown that human nature always wins about ideology.

What really bugs me about high earners is when they counter how hard they work fir it, the sacrifices they made. Does nobody see there are people in this country who work hard and make sacrifices for minimum wage on zero hours contracts?

Yes there are plenty of people who work just as hard, and sacrifice and earn next to nothing. But if a few more wealthy tax payers were encouraged in, then everyone's standard of living would rise.

There are plenty of people who choose to deny, but wealth does create wealth.

Where I live, teachers are paid £60-70000 a year, and nurses the same. No one is self sacrificing and everyone is paying lower tax.

Trickle down isn't working.

I'll have earned a whacking 11k or so by the end of the he tax year. I live in a council house, by MN standards I'm pretty poor.

However, I don't agree with taxing the rich to within an inch of their lives. They've got that money because they're the best in their chosen field, worked hard to get there and are where I'd want my children to aspire to be.

It doesn't make economical sense to hit them hard when they have the resources to move or avoid the tax completely.

Driving the rich out is a good thing, they raise the cost of living for everyone else.

It won't work. The rich will just leave France and come here and make it worse for all us Londoners who are not rich. High tax do not work unless they are globally enforced and even then, I am not sure if I agree that the money people earn should be appropriated by the government, especially as so much is wasted on dodgy causes.

How will it make it worse for us in London? Wealthy families spending money in shops (especially the independant shops that dominate south ken), paying tax and contributing to society.

I'll welcome them

Very well perlona, and who will fund the NHS/pensions/defence/welfare/education in their absence?!

I love that the main rationale for not having a supertax is that rich people are selfish, greedy, unpatriotic cunts who'll run away and take their money with them when they go if we try to tax them, so we should probably just leave them alone.

Beautifully put!

Actually I think that £830k is a lot of money to earn and so as the 75% band is set so high I think it's appropriate. Basically a sign that people just shouldn't be paid that much!

foreverondiet The state confiscating 75% will indeed send a message. I'm not sure the state will be particularly glad once those it is intended for receive it.

Taxing rich people more decreases tax revenue, costs jobs, and has already been proven, in real life (see Dennis Healey) to fail. Yet socialists think it is a good idea. Why?

I've never understood why some people think it is appropriate for them to judge whether someone else in the private sector is "paid too much". In the public sector, sure - after all, we are paying the salaries through our taxes. But if someone has started a company, taken risks, been clever, and is now well rewarded for it - what difference does it make to you what they earn? Private sector executive pay policy is a matter for shareholders.

It will be interesting to see if the total tax take goes up or down.

History tells us it will go down.

Hollande is a gift for the Tories. Cameron is already making comparisons.

www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h1fAjcg4NKhKep-MOK_oLTTIyjGQ?docId=3858d689-57ee-419e-92e8-36c1a3a88ff6

Plenty of people have left already. French people working in international companies are falling over themselves to be expatriated.

I've never understood why some people think it is appropriate for them to judge whether someone else in the private sector is "paid too much". In the public sector, sure - after all, we are paying the salaries through our taxes. But if someone has started a company, taken risks, been clever, and is now well rewarded for it - what difference does it make to you what they earn? Private sector executive pay policy is a matter for shareholders.

This. Absolutely.

They judge because they have zero understanding of economics.

The reality is that this tax is neither here nor there.

It is very easy to avoid, which is why they are claiming it is only for two years, as otherwise not a soul will pay it.

And not necessarily because they are greedy and selfish. I don't earn anywhere near the threshold for this tax, nor do I ever intend to.

However I still resent every single penny I have to pay to this government. It's not because I don't believe in redistribution, it's because I don't want my money to be wasted on red tape and salaries for unpleasant fonctionnaires who will retire on incredibly generous pensions and work fuck all hours essentially harassing members of the public.

I have a friend who is a single mum and who works her butt off (self employed) but got a tax investigation 'because it is not possible to live on so little money so she must be lying about her income'.

She's not, she lives hand to mouth and relies on handouts. And if her benefits didn't get cut every 25 seconds by civil servants with not enough actual useful stuff to do, maybe she could spend a bit less time fighting them and a bit more growing her business.

But no. She has about 3 government employees whose job it is to make her jump through hoops in order to receive the benefits she is entitled to.

If more of our money was going to people like her, and less to the fonctionnaires, maybe the tax rate would not be as much of an issue.

Mind you, it wouldn't be necessary then either.

Seconding agreement with longfingernails point on private sector exec pay being a matter for shareholders.

But then again I really don't understand why there is such a stigma attached to being successful/wealthy in the UK. There is nothing to be ashamed of if you work hard and earn a lot of money (please note, I am not for a moment suggesting that people who don't earn a lot of money don't also work hard!) Then you have all these comments on threads like this such as - get rid of the rich, the rich don't contribute anything, etc etc. Would you rather live in an LEDC??!

Now he's promising tax cuts and reduced labour costs, it's always possible he'll quietly drop this new rate.

www.france24.com/en/20131231-hollande-vows-create-jobs-new-years-address-france/

order-order.com/2014/01/02/francois-hollande-abandons-milibandism/

How many businesses (because that's what they want to be worried about) upped and left the UK when we had similar? Not many.