France’s Hollande slammed over millionaire tax proposal

PanARMENIAN.Net - The French government on Tuesday, February 28 slammed a proposal by Socialist presidential frontrunner Francois Hollande to slap a 75-per-cent tax on millionaires, saying such a punitive tax could drive away top talent.

Hollande, who is leading incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy in opinion polls ahead of the April 22-May 6 election, announced the proposal in an interview with TF1 television on Monday evening.

Condemning what he called the “indecent wealth” of some French bosses, he proposed a 75-per-cent tax on annual incomes of over 1 million euros (1.3 million dollars). The new tax would apply to the part of the income that exceeds 1 million euros.

Hollande, a parliamentarian and former Socialist Party leader, had previously proposed a new 45-per-cent tax on incomes exceeding 150,000 euros. That proposal still stood, he said.

Defence Minister Gerard Longuet warned that a 75-per-cent tax rate would make investors “go elsewhere.” “We need grey matter in France, we need decision makers,” he argued.

Centrist candidate Francois Bayrou, of the MoDem party, and far-right National Front leader Marine le Pen, also slammed the Socialist proposal.

Bayrou said senior executives would try to get round it by “offshoring their salaries” into foreign accounts. Le Pen called the tax “absurd and ideological.”

The debate comes as opinion polls show Sarkozy gaining ground on Hollande, two weeks after he formally entered the race, M&C reported citing DPA.