French tax exiles get to like boring Belgium
Boring, the belgians? Well, perhaps, but they do have excellent beer and good chocolate, Jacques Brel was a great singer, and I love Jean Ray's novels.
Matthew Campbell, Paris
THE French like to tell rude jokes about Belgians, but this time the laugh is on them. To escape their punitive tax regime, the Gallic elite are fleeing to the flat country mocked in France for its dismal weather and enjoyment of chips.
âBoring Brusselsâ is the bolthole of choice for French tax exiles, and Belgium is laughing all the way to the bank. Having flown the draconian French tax coop, well-endowed industrialists are helping to balance Belgian books with their taxes.
âIt means less money for the French government,â said Claude Taittinger of the champagne-making family, who blamed a wealth tax introduced in 1981 by François Mitterrand, the late Socialist president, for forcing his family to sell out to an American hotel chain.
The Halleys, of the Carrefour supermarket chain, have also settled in Belgium, joining such pillars of the French Establishment as Philippe Jaffré, former head of Elf Aquitaine, the state oil company.
The French Whoâs Who of fiscal exiles includes the singers Charles Aznavour and Patricia Kaas; the actresses Emmanuelle Béart and Isabelle Adjani; and the tennis player Amélie Mauresmo, who are resident for tax purposes in Switzerland.
For the Taittingers, the last straw came when, instead of following the EU trend of cutting wealth tax, France held to its revolutionary creed of égalité and fraternité to abolish a cap that until 1997 had limited the amount of tax a person could pay to 85% of their income.
For members of the champagne clan who were also paying the âsolidarity tax on wealthâ, which targets those with assets above £500,000 regardless of earnings, it meant an annual tax bill greater than their income. âSome members of the family had to sell shares in the company each year just to pay their tax bills,â said Claude Taittinger. âIt was unbearable.â
Some of the family moved to Switzerland and Britain. Jean Taittinger, who like Claude is a son of Pierre Taittinger, the companyâs founder, went with his family to Belgium.
Jokes aside â French humour has traditionally cast the Belgians in the role reserved by snobby Britons for the Irish â Belgium has the advantage of speaking French and being only 85 minutes from Paris by train; and although its tax rate of 53.5% on income above £26,200 is higher than Britainâs, it does not impose a wealth tax.
âAny Frenchman who wants to make money goes to Britain or America these days,â said Claude. âIn France, it is virtually impossible to build up a fortune any more.â
This flight of the most successful does not bode well for France, whose government is accused of concealing the impact of emigration by putting the amount of capital leaving the country at just £1.3 billion a year, when unofficial estimates put it closer to £55 billion.
To lure back some of the money, Dominique de Villepin, the prime minister, has pledged tax reform and a top rate of 60%. But he has dismissed the idea of ditching the wealth tax. As the extremely wealthy leave at the rate of about one a day, however, it is left to others to foot the bill.
Thanks to rising property prices, a Breton farmer with an attractive holding on the coast or a middle-class Parisian family with a two-bedroom flat and no mortgage are as vulnerable to the wealth tax as a Taittinger.
Anne-Marie, Claudeâs niece, one of the most recent victims seeking refuge in Brussels, celebrated her acquisition of Belgian nationality with a champagne reception. If all the tax exiles were to do likewise, life for the French community there would be an endless party.
Posted by: anonymous5089 2005-09-26 |