Multiple parties are jockeying for position in the aftermath of France’s seismic snap election. The leftist New Popular Front (NPF) insists its ideas should be implemented.
France’s left wing New Popular Front (NPF) - now the largest group in parliament - has called for a prime minister who will implement its ideas including a new wealth tax and petrol price controls.
The leftist alliance secured the most seats in the recent French elections but fell short of the 289 needed for a majority in the National Assembly, France’s lower house of parliament.
President Emmanuel Macron’s Together bloc came in second and Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) party finished third.
France’s parties are now jockeying for position and it’s unclear exactly how things will shake out, but the NPF has insisted it will implement its radical set of ideas.
a new 90% tax on any annual income above €400,000
Lmao. Probably not gonna happen but based af
Love it. Wealthy in France is 200k, anyone who makes over 400k is uberwealthy
400k is a monthly salary of 33000€ You can live very comfortably from a tenth of that where i live in germany, which is a notoriously expensive city. So yeah even if you just barely go over the limit and have to live with a tenth of those 400k, you would still be completely fine.This is all ignoring already saved up wealth ofcourse.TLDR im dumb
even if you just barely go over the limit and have to live with a tenth of those 400k
Progressive taxation doesn’t work like that, the 90% tax bracket in this case would only apply to the income someone earned over €400K. Everything they earn under that amount is taxed at much lower rates, the same rates as people who have lower income
The current max tax rate in france is 45% + 3% for the portion exceeding 250k. (4% for exceeding 500k)
So ignoring the 3%, at 400k you would be taxed at 45% leaving you with 220k?
And at 1M it would be those 220k€ + (remaining 600k€ @ 90% = 60k)
So a total of 280k€ after tax?
I dont earn anywhere near that much so i never bothered to understand how this stuff actually works.
Yes. That is the correct math.
Some tax codes have deductions and such, so the actual amount kept could be a little higher.
The math is a bit more complicated since there are multiple tax brackets below 400k, but that’s the general idea yeah
It doesn’t even work like that: only the “extra” revenue above 400k would be subject to the 90% tax, everything below that would still be subject to standard tax rates
I wonder what the upper limit of the 400k tax bracket is?
TLDR im dumb
You are a saint in my eyes.
Still good though, imo the win is that a big chunk of representatives are saying this is what the country wants.
The NFP proposal would make the top 10% French pay more tax and the rest 90% would pay same or less tax. They want to introduce more tax “slices” to make it adjust more progressively with higher income.
I hope it gets done so they can fund social programs. But the rich will flee to Germany
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Even if they do implement such tax, I wonder how many ways there are for rich people to avoid paying those taxes. They tend to be very good at skirting around such things. They even pay people who are professionals in the field of tax-around-skirting.
I think it’s a great target to aim for. That’s an unfathomable income to most people, so it should at least have popular support
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Taxes don’t work like that. It’s only the portion above a level that’s taxed at that level.
In the US you could absolutely fall into a new range where certain deductions no longer apply, so you could make that extra little bit of income, then lose out on deductions totaling more than your increased income.
It’s not as simple as the progressive tax brackets look at first glance.
That’s what the standard deduction is for unless you are talking about a very narrow range of only freelancers/business owners
There are other deductions that no longer come into play after a certain income. If I recall correctly, mortgage interest, child tax credits, and some medical deductions.
OK but owning a house and having children are both choices, so I’m not exactly sure I see what’s so unfair about not having those certain deductions. Medical is the only one I agree is legitimate here so fair point
Tax brackets don’t lower income from the bracket before them. If you had 123net/177gross, and got a raise to 200 gross, you would only pay 45% on that 23k difference between 177 and 300. Thus going to 137net/200 gross.
Progressive taxation so nothing lowers your net income. That scale seems quite sensible really, and you’d even have more than the 100k because again progressive taxation. And honestly 100k net is already an obscene amount of money for a single person.
It will not. People will vehemently defend the rich.
Some will, but there’s an ever growing movement against gross wealth inequality. When simply buying groceries becomes a struggle for more and more people, that’s usually a telltale sign that the working class is going to start getting angry at the insatiable greed of those at the top.
If there ever will be fight in line for bread, french will do french thing
The most likely thing that will happen is the rich renouncing citizenship and leaving the country.
renouncing citizenship
Renouncing voting rights? Good.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like this too, but let’s be realistic. The rich wield political influence through their funding of various media and propaganda groups, which tends to have a big effect on a population. Then again this is France, and maybe my American cynicism is bleeding through…
Worked fine in America during it’s “great” days that all these Trump voters seem to yearn for
That was only on earned income and with a starting point so high that at some point only one person ever reached it.
That was before the explosion of jet travel. Now the rich fly around in their private jets to operate their businesses all over the world. They take advantage of the fact that governments can’t coordinate their taxes very well.
Funny how they want to ‘mAkE aMeRiCa GrEaT aGaIn’ but don’t want any of the policies that made America great, just the shitty racist ones that made life awful for non-white males. I’m just waiting for them to further limit it by land holding or wealth at some point… Really take us back to when we were ‘really great’
Maybe I’m just not used to the income needed in major cities in France, but that seems like pretty high tax rate for the income in major cities like Lyons or Paris. Can someone give me a little context? Does France do graduated brackets like the US? If that’s the case then I could see this being pretty fair.
They do. Someone with a salary of €400,000 would take home approximately €242,000 after income tax.
Up to €10,777: 0% tax rate From €10,778 to €27,478: 11% tax rate From €27,479 to €78,570: 30% tax rate From €78,571 to €168,994: 41% tax rate More than €168,994: 45% tax rateAccording to The EIU, the cost of living in Paris is similar to San Francisco.
That seems like quite a bit of one’s income, but on the flipside France has a lot more social services and such than we get here in the US, so I guess I have to consider that side of it.
It’s still just a fraction of the top 1%. Even $400,000 in the US would put you in the top 1%, nobody needs more than this amount of money, ever.
Does France do graduated brackets like the US?
Is there any place that does taxes without brackets, just flat “pass this number and suddenly lose half of everything”? Does that even exist outside the imagination of Americans who have never understood or looked at taxes? Brackets should be the definition of income taxes, is it not? It’s not an economic tariff applied regardless the volume of merchandise passing a frontier.
Jesus dude calm down I am just asking what the basic structure of the French tax system looks like. I don’t live in France, there is not a whole lot of reason for me to know.
Yea 400k won’t happen, I could see something in the low millions being palatable to populace at large
Seriously, that’s how much a doctor makes while carrying $300k in student loans. Yes, these are US numbers, and I’m sure France has both lower salaries and much lower or no student loans. But the point stands that $400k is a really high salary but not necessarily wildly wealthy if you are paying more in student loans than you do for your house.
What this will accomplish is force newly rich people to stay in their class while the wealthy class people get no change at all since they don’t have a high salary. The wealthy stay wealthy while the poor have no chance to become wealthy, only merely rich.
Student loans are tax deductible (in the US at least). So if a large portion of your salary is paying off loans you don’t get taxed on that portion at all.
Only if you make below $85k/year. People making $400k aren’t able to deduct the payments on their $300k loans. Also, the limit is $2500/year in interest. People with $300k in loans pay that much every other month in interest.
Macron would probably sooner dissolve the republic and declare the third empire than allow this to happen, but I wish the NPF good luck.
As Macron likes to say: “Souverän ist, wer über den Ausnahmezustand entscheidet”
Honestly, they should probably leave income alone and just double down on the wealth tax.
Wage-based taxation has always been an awkward way to target the rich.
I have very different feelings about someone from a poor background who went into massive debt to develop their skills and become a top earner vs. someone who inherited a fortune and doesn’t put any effort beyond checking their bank balance periodically.
Plus, there is the “won’t they just leave?” argument. Which is mostly FUD, but in the case where someone’s wealth is based on their skilled labor they do have a much easier time just leaving. If your wealth is from owning a portfolio of apartment buildings, good luck taking those with you.
If your wealth is from owning a portfolio of apartment buildings, good luck taking those with you.
Sell it to a holding company incorporated abroad. Own shares of that holding company instead.
Wage-based taxation has always been an awkward way to target the rich.
Is it wages or is it income? Income covers much more than wages, and in a good system one would account for everything without loopholes. A comprehensive income tax that catches everything would go pretty far.
Wealth tax can be dicey, in theory. It would require a sell-off to actually have money that can be used to pay taxes, and the sell-off would change the value of the assets. For example, the S&P 500 is “worth” 46 billion dollars. That’s more than twice the “money” that exists total, it’s literally impossible to actually manifest all of that to dollars, so most of the “worth” cannot be “realized”.
I see fud used on a semi regular basis. It’s fear uncertainty and doubt. And I don’t think most people know that.
I wasn’t sure, but I was worried that’s what it was
but in the case where someone’s wealth is based on their skilled labor they do have a much easier time just leaving. If your wealth is from owning a portfolio of apartment buildings, good luck taking those with you.
Nice one
Does no one here understand how incone taxes work? The 90% rate is on annual income over €400,000. Average annual income in France was €41,000.
I think the guy you’re responding to is more talking about the distinction between income and capital gains, with income making up far less of the wealthy’s worth than existing investments.
But yes, a lot of people also have no concept of how tax brackets work.
Right. Someone with a networth of many millions may only have a yearly income of $100k. Sometimes far less. Different tax systems can also have different definitions of income. Is inheritance income? Are growth stocks that you haven’t cashed in yet income? Are stock dividends income? You can answer yes or no to any of these, but however you answer, you can still structure the tax system around those answers to come to an equitable arrangement.
The end result is that basically no one will be subject to this tax bracket.
It is high enough that everyone at that level will mainly get their real income from stock/loan which aren’t salaries.
Having this tax bracket or not having it is, basically the same for the super wealthy. The real method to tax them is through capital tax, not income.
The moving part is very real for the ultra rich in Europe.
In Norway they transfer their assets to their kids and send them to live in Switzerland for them.
Yeah, it’s not FUD.
It’s really gotta be a 100% tax (that is, a hard cap) or nothing. Wealth that slowly whittles away will tend to move elsewhere.
I’ll accept this as a compromise between reality and my actual position, 100% expropriation of wealth for every kkkrakkker.
i took pleasure reading that aloud and rolling the k’s
Can you expand on what kkkrakkker means?
The kkk references an organization common to the American Midwest and Deep South known as the “Klu Klux Klan”, most notorious for its domestic terrorist activities aimed at wealthy and well-organized communities of color following the end of the American Civil War. They were also a powerful political caucus stretching across both major American parties for over a century. Often conceived of as a “secret society” with a certain practices bordering on the occult as part of initiation and promotion, the real influence of the organization tended to boil down to its control of state and local police agencies and prosecuting offices.
A cracker is a stale white salty piece of bread, often served with soup or stew.
Gotchya.
For a second there I thought they were using it to say they’d take all of someone’s money based on the color of their skin as well as associating all white people with the KKK.
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Ah. Just saw the .ml. Good luck with the racism.
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And here I thought it had something to do with treating people a certain way because of the color of their skin. /shrug.
Call it whatever you want but it’s morally disgusting to treat anyone a particular way due to immutable traits.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
France’s left wing New Popular Front (NPF) - now the largest group in parliament - has called for a prime minister who will implement its ideas including a new wealth tax and petrol price controls.
The leftist alliance secured the most seats in the recent French elections but fell short of the 289 needed for a majority in the National Assembly, France’s lower house of parliament.
President Emmanuel Macron’s Together bloc came in second and Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) party finished third.
France’s parties are now jockeying for position and it’s unclear exactly how things will shake out, but the NPF has insisted it will implement its radical set of ideas.
It is possible that President Macron - who called the snap election in a bid to counter the rise of the far-right - could seek a deal with more moderate elements of the NFP.
His government last week suspended a decree that would have diminished workers’ rights to unemployment benefits, which has been interpreted as a gesture toward the left.
The original article contains 388 words, the summary contains 174 words. Saved 55%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
The sad thing about high taxes like that is that it can penalize normal people with a normal, high income job. 400k won’t probably matter but in my experience, I have a high salary and I don’t have the time or even the money to hire a bunch of people to optimize my taxes in a tax free-heaven paradise.
Normal working people shouldn’t be taxed like crazy. Corporation is the thing we want to target. Large corporations. They have the mean to evade the laws.
The common man and women does not. Even if you have a small company, you do not have the time or the money to ignore the laws or taxes.
Capitalism isn’t made for big corporations. It is made for small company competing with each other. How the fuck the common Man is supposed to compete with Walmart? Like, what??
I think “rich” nowadays starts at $1m usd/y. No one really needs more than that. I think 90% is a bit steep, but that leaves a lot of wiggle room for negotiation.
It depends on cost of living. $1M in the US doesn’t buy the same as $1M in France.
€920,000 is just fine.
I assume each country would find that sweet spot for themselves. Either way that’s a crap ton of money. After that, taxes should be high.
Oh look, someone who doesn’t understand how progressive tax brackets work.
The 90% only kicks in on any money made over €400k, bro. That means they’re already making that 400k (less whatever the prior tax brackets are), and if they make €400,100 then only that extra €100 is taxed at 90%. This is so far from hurting “normal working people” that I can hardly believe your take isn’t a deliberate troll.
I know how tax brackets work. That’s exactly how you can optimize your taxes. You try to lower your income as much as possible with all the shenanigans that exists in the law. That’s what I’m saying.
If I do 410k and I don’t have time to optimize my shit, I’m penalized because very rich bro that owns company and shit can hire other bros to optimize their taxes.
This is a bit of a misleading summary.
Melenchon speaks for his own party, France Unbowed (LFI), not the entire NFP alliance.
The NFP as a whole has not declared support for Melenchon’s position, although his party controls 71 (~41%) of NFP’s 180 seats in the National Assembly.
Macron has already indicated that he will not allow Melenchon to become Prime Minister, and the entire NFP will be aware that they must select a more moderate leader to represent them if they expect to gain enough support from the centre to operate as a minority government.
It’s not just Macron or Ensemble, even within the NFP some parties don’t want Melenchon from what I understand. At least the PS (Parti Socialiste, but they’re actually just social democrats) which has 59 seats and therefore the second most seats in the NFP doesn’t want him to be prime minister.
Thx stranger, so hard to get news from a single source if you’re not a specialist on the topic
Macron has already indicated that he will not allow Melenchon to become Prime Minister
Good news for LePen, I guess.
lol it’s like France loves to choose violence every time.
National sport. It’s fifth time now. If right would become too hard to fight against, then it will be sixth.
Based
Tax them. Tax the fuck out of their income and wealth.
To be clear the 90% tax is an income tax, which is actually not unprecedented as other commenters note. Melenchon has talked about 100% but I guess the other parties negotiated him down.
Actually, 90% income tax for the top incomes was common in western countries in the 50s.
On paper, yes, in practice, no.
In the US, at the time that marginal tax rates got that high, the amount of things you could deduct was also MUCH higher. Truth is, nobody ever actually paid 90% back then.
So the thing about this is that, even if the things wealthy people can deduct means that they rarely pay the 90% marginal tax in practice, the fact that the government is using the tax code to coerce them into doing certain things instead of hoarding their money is still massively beneficial. The current regime abdicates a tremendous degree of the government’s ability to tell the rich what to do with their money, and that is a major contributor to our society’s seeming paralysis with respect to doing things.
That sounds like the era. KISS was not a principle appreciated by economic legislators until the later 20th century. Mercantilism died slow.
Just 90% has the pro that you’ll actually collect revenue. Nobody’s paying out money that doesn’t reach the intended party even a bit. However, I feel like 100% would be worth it just for the paradigm shift in the way we think about society - that maybe there should be limits to how “special” you can get, and that that’s not spooky communism but simply realism about our mortal condition.
Petrol price controls is a terrible idea.
Why not subsidised (free) public transport, more cycle lanes more cycle parking, subsidised electric bikes, mandated EV charging.
Controlling Fossil Fuel prices can prevent other private entities from driving up inflation of commodities. It doesn’t have to be permanent, you could effect a set goal for 6 years, evaluate the results every 6 weeks, and tweak the pricing to prevent inflation/deflation cycles.
While you control the transport costs, you can now plan on how much energy it is consuming to do the logistics. Even setup renewables for the remote regions with medium to large capacity backups ( not just chemical batteries, but pumped storage and other practical solutions ).
You could increase the buffer between different urban zones, commercial, industrial, heavy commercial, dense residential, suburbian.
- Energy storage densities.
- Vehicular traffic densities.
- Public transport frequencies.
- Private traffic exemption zones.
- Cycling/Pedestrian infrastructure.
- Rent-controlled segmentation.
- Recreational facilities , maintenance and usage.
All of these things can be measured, calculated, even funded by simply controlling the Fossil-fuel prices.
Imagine 10 or 20 stadiums with Extra-Large battery backups, only on game-nights the full bank would see utilization, rest of the time, half or even quarter of the load can be saved up for fluctuations. In emergencies the stadium provides power, safety, shelter and communal support.
So many things can be planned around transportation and logistics. Fossil-fuel literally drives a lot of the traffic. Measure, calculate and control that and you have a reliable method to make sensible common sense decisions. Transparent for all citizens to see the data and the correlation. Accountable for every cent.
Because motorists hate anything that would help them. Why would you not want a separate bike lane as a motorist? It reduces congestion and gets the cyclist you hate so much off the road at the same time! It’s a win win!
In my experience, people tend to not want things that don’t benefit them directly.
If they don’t use the bike lanes they don’t want them to take up what could be a car lane they would use.
Lots of places in France are so remote and sparsely populated that public transport does not work there, at least not yet. It may or may not work once autonomous vehicles are fit for rural areas, but this may take a while.
Give them money then. Don’t give them cheap petrol.
The problem with high wealth taxes is the same as the problem with nationalizing privately-owned businesses. Even if you’re not worried about the people you tax fleeing the country (maybe they can’t because their investments aren’t mobile) you still have to worry about the fact that no one would build anything in France (even things not currently taxed) if there was good reason to think that France might suddenly decide to seize a large fraction of its value.
(High income taxes aren’t as big a deal because wealthy people can restructure their investments in order to avoid most of them, but I wonder whether the lost economic activity is actually worth more to the country than the money raised by the tax.)
Most people who actually build everything do not have significant enough wealth to be affected. France doesn’t need someone with significant wealth in order to build something. France can provide the financial capital. We do know that public investment spurs private investment, but private investment isn’t strictly required.
Besides, we’ve already seen plenty examples of countries where people with significant wealth do not use it to build things in low tax destinations, especially where that low tax results in crumbling infrastructure and unstable labor and political climate.
I wonder whether the lost economic activity is actually worth more to the country than the money raised by the tax.
The answer is “yes” it’s worth it. Answering “no” puts you in a race to the bottom which leads to dysfunctional economy and eventually some sort of political upheaval, during which wealth and factories are exceedingly likely to be taken away anyways. See history for references. Also every EUR creates more economic activity at the bottom, than the top. The vast majority of the aggregate demand in richer economies isn’t comprised from the top 1%. The aggregate demand is what makes it worth making things and what drives significant private investment. Drive it down and there comes a point where no amount of tax cuts can offset it.
Yeah, the person you responded to doesn’t understand investment. No one makes investments based on taxes. They make investments based on demand.
That’s why people build in NYC which has a million taxes and regulations, while tiny island tax havens have little investment beyond tourism. No, Austin is not the next Silicon Valley no matter how many tax breaks they give out. No, Atlanta is not the next Hollywood.
Hell yes. Finally policy suggestions which make sense. Autocratphiles masquerading as communists are mad at this turn of events??
Have you no idea how capitalists function?
Actual communists are more intelligent than this.
Its just hilarious seeing 400k being wealthy my man. The really wealthy don’t take a salary and instead have corporations and trust funds that pay them minimum salary and more stocks and shares. They then leverage these stocks and shares using cheap loans from their bank buddies for very low interest tates.
Income tax is a tax on the working class, not the capitalist class.
Does the french suggestion separate income types? It’s very preferable to tax non-working high wealth & income even more than salary income.
Capitalists usually aim the tax pressure towards median salary income, and less for stocks, or property. The regressive model should be switched to progressive taxing.
AVERAGE annual income in France (the one that gets skewed by a handful of people making exorbitant incomes) is €41,000. Over half of people in France make less than 1/10th the €400,000 mark. This tax doesn’t affect anyone that actually works for a living
This tax doesn’t affect anyone that actually works for a living
The average general surgeon in France makes around 230,000 euros before bonuses and all, so there are surgeons out there making 400k euros. I’m pretty sure they work for a living. You also underestimate how hard highly paid corporate executives work. You might not VALUE their work, but most of them work their asses off (even if what they are doing is counterproductive or stupid or worthless).
This tax doesn’t affect very many people who work for a living, but the people who are wealthy enough to actually not work for a living at all will not be affected either, since this isn’t a tax on wealth.
No true Scotsman. The evidence is right in front of you but you don’t want to see it.
All i am saying is that if you tax working people its not actually doing what it said on the tin: taxing the rich. Rich people don’t work for their income. Their money works for them.
I agree with you about that part, the part I’m criticizing you for is your continued belief that ‘real’ communists are intelligent even though the comments here are filled with their shoddy reasoning and inability to learn from reality
“Radical set of ideas”
Rational set of ideas.
“Rational”
“Petrol price controls”
Or price controls at all.
We need to fix the price of croissants, vote for count Binface!
There is a slight argument to be made in order to stabilize transportation because people depend on the shipping of goods. However, there should be a differentiation between the shipment of necessities and luxuries. Ultimately this could come in the form of a higher tax on consumer goods and other for hire services.
I don’t think that’s what they’re getting at.
Radical means change or far from the norm, so when the system we live in is crazy then radical often is rational. The terms are not opposed.
