François Hollande doesn’t like the rich, he likes taxes!

Last Tuesday, France heard terrible news from François Hollande, the socialist candidate for the presidential elections of 2012.

He surprised everybody when he announced his intention to tax incomes over one million euros at 75%.  He cited patriotism as a reason to pay extra taxes to straighten out the country, while the actual president Nicolas Sarkozy criticizes improvisation and amateurishness from the socialist candidate. 

In this case, 10 000 people earning an annual income above a million of euros could be affected according to a simulation of the economist Thomas Piketty. Accused of theft by the minister of the economy François Barroin, the socialist team evaluate the yield of this measure to be between 200 and 250 million euros to the government. However, they pointed out that most of the time, the average rate of tax would be lower than 50%.

Who would be targeted?

Basically: financial professionals, bankers, artist, and sportsmen and women.

Indeed, after this politician became aware of the wage increase of 34% of stock market bosses, he jumped at the opportunity to rally partisans to his cause.

His main target is people from poor backgrounds, immigrants, and employees with low incomes. He wants them to take part in his project to eradicate this ‘elite’ who remains in the socialist's sight. He relentlessly accuses 'the financial industry' to be the cause of the economic crisis and all the problems that France has had to face during recent years. But isn’t it finance that helps a country's development, economic growth and improvement of international business and relations? Everything is interlinked and it is incorrect and easy to blame the financial system for that. Yes it has its imperfections, but if we work on it to avoid previous issues happening again, we could make the most of it to re-establish a stable economy.

Hollande's objectives

To be clear on Hollande's objectives - he not only wants to tax the rich, but all citizens! After he publicly announced his project, he also indicated his intention to tax all Life Insurance holders at the same rate as income tax. Here, we are not talking about 10 000 people anymore but 17 million households! This is appalling and ridiculous! This means that if you earn a million through life insurance, after paying taxes of 75%, you would only have one quarter of this amount left. So, all you have saved over the years, before daring to withdraw money from your insurance, will be partly taken away by the State.

Now the question is, what would these people become if François Hollande wins the election? They would leave the country for sure and others would use offshore accounts to secure their money. So, investment will diminish both domestically and internationally, since it will also deter foreign direct investment to enter the French market. France would then become uncompetitive and would surely see its growth fall sharply (which is not very high at the moment).

This news has incredibly affected François Hollande's credibility and campaign for the next elections. I will be following this carefully !

(source: françoishollande95.fr)

(HOLLANDE WANTS TO TAX THE  VERY RICH ...

Charles !...

We have forgotten mattress in our second castle!)