We have discussed the plan of the new French government to impose a 75% tax on the top earners in the country, a move that in my view is better politics than economics. Now there is an alleged tort to go with the politics (Thank God). France’s richest man, Bernard Arnault, announced that he was seeking Belgian nationality. The response from the leftist Liberation newspaper was a giant headline superimposed over Arnault’s face reading “Get lost, rich jerk”. Now Arnault is suing for for “public insult” – over the offending headline’s “vulgarity and brutality.”
Arnault is the head of the luxury conglomerate LVMH and denies that he is seeking Belgian citizenship to avoid the new tax by France’s Socialist government. The headline is a take off from a line by by ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, who told a man who refused to shake his hand “Casse-toi, pov’ con” (“Get lost, you poor idiot”).
Notably, while the earlier blog;drew comparisons between the tax and the French Revolution, the newspaper drew the same analogy in its response to Arnault — saying he is like the “nobles and opulent bourgeois” who resisted and fled the 1789 French Revolution. It is a curious analogy given the disastrous orgy of blood following the Revolution.
Despite the unfortunate analogy and my general agreement that the 75% tax is unwise, I fail to see how this is actionable. In the United States, a “public insult” is protected speech and courts limit tort liability so not to allow civil lawsuits to “chill” free speech. In addition to this, Arnault is a public figure in the midst of a public controversy. This strikes me as something that should be protected as opinion.
To the extent that the newspaper states as fact that he is fleeing taxes (something he denies), there may be factual challenges. However, this also may be covered by opinion as to his motivations. Even other super wealthy French citizens and conservative leaders have denounced the move by Arnault.
While his spokesman have cited the “extreme vulgarity and the violence of the headline,” it seems pretty mild and non-violent on this side of the pond. Of course, the French laws are different on defamation and the United States tends to protect free speech to a greater degree than even its closest allies.
What do you think?
Source: France 24
ID707:
the way I look at corporate taxation is that they dont pay it either way. They just pass it on to us as a cost of doing business.
If their tax rate is 25% they just raise the cost of the good or service to cover the tax. Think sales tax, does a merchant keep the cost of his bottle of coke at $1.25 if the sales tax goes to 7.5% from 4.5%?
All taxes are paid by individuals.
Do you want the price of clothes, shoes, food, hair products, cars, movie tickets and every other product or service to increase by 25%?
I refuse to eat a gold-plated toilet.
@Bron: At 75% they really wouldnt be able to afford more workers or pay them more.
That is ridiculous; income taxes on the rich do not affect how much they can pay workers, even in France, like in the USA, wages are 100% deductible and do not count as income at all. Nobody in the civilized world pays their employees with after-tax income. Employee pay and benefit is a deductible business expense.
Which means the OPPOSITE is true, at a 75% income tax rate, the rich might get more benefit from a given $1000 by using $1000 to hire better people, or train them, or make them happier and more productive by paying them more, as opposed to giving $750 to the government and only keeping $250 for themselves.
A higher income tax on the rich encourages less profit taking and more reinvestment, including in their workforce. Those are 100% deductible expenses, meaning ZERO percent tax on the money.
We know the child rapist, Roman Polanski, will take the tax hit. I still think we should seize all the rich folks assets and then eat them.
Bron,
Is there a difference between taxing corporate profits and private income tax? I would asssume (don’t know) that funds retained and taxable from a corporation could be invested and escape taxation. How is it?
Matts Johnson????
Frankly:
I would be interested in the statistics.
The US does not have much of a free economy, not when we bail out bankers and control our interest rates and print money.
If you want more of the same you are welcome to it, I would like to see the bankers go broke when they make stupid deals. I would also like to see real interest rates and real money not controlled by the FED.
I would like to see John Q. Public have a dollar in his wallet which has an objective value and is not subject to the next round of printing press money.
Mixed nuts at Costco, in case you havent noticed, have gone from $9.99 to $15.99 in the last couple of years. That is what TARP and Stimulus and the FED have done to our money. Reduced its value.
Last time I looked those arent free market policies.
When the 99% can avoid taxes to the same extent that the 1% do, then we’ll have equality……
Frankly:
“why do these rich people expect workers to get by on less and less every year?”
I dont know, maybe they are dicks and dont want to pay their people properly. Workers should sell their labor for as much as they can in the work place. A good economy allows them to do that. Maybe people dont ask for enough when hired. To get a good employee I would pay more than market rate and so would most people I know.
I personally think some employers pay their people too little and under market value. But if the employee wants to make more go on strike, join a union or start your own business. Or get additional training so you are more marketable and can command higher wages.
The answer isnt to tax the living bejesus out of rich people. At 75% they really wouldnt be able to afford more workers or pay them more.
In my rather cursory review of the French Loi du 29 juillet 1881 sur la liberté de la presse or Freedom of the Press Law of July 29, 1881, it contains many references that from an American point of view would be a bit of culture shock.
Specifically for this discussion, there exists a criminal penalty under Paragraph 3 (Crimes Against Persons) Article 29. Which roughly translates to …
Created by Law Bulletin 1881-07-29 Laws No. 637 p. 125 125
Any allegation or imputation of a fact that undermines the honor or reputation of the person or body to which the fact is imputed is a libel.
Publication directly or through reproduction of this allegation or imputation is punishable, even if it is done as doubtful or if it is a person or body not specifically named, but whose identification is made possible by the terms speeches, shouting, threats, written or printed placards or posters.
Any offensive expression, term of contempt or invective which does not contain an allegation of fact is an insult
There are other references in the law regarding criminal penalties for incitement on provocation. It mainly deals with prohibitions on instigating others to commit crimes or engage in hostility to protected groups such as ethnic minorities and the likes. The spirit of the law seems to be geared toward preventing slanderous publications against individuals which in turn causes them injury by being subjected to public humiliation or hatred. Reputation seems to have almost a property value in that the law establishes that harming one’s reputation is a form of injury or loss of value.
Reputation is closely protected via criminal prosecution. In fact, one could derive this from mentions in the law about prohibitions on showing pictures of handcuffed persons arrested on charges and for publishing court documents accusing a person of a crime before the charges have been read in open court.
It seems to me if French law criminalizes libel and slander to this degree, I would imagine the civil tort issue would be much easier to prosecute than what we would expect in the American system.
Additionally of great difference to our system also contained within the French laws are crimes for insulting heads of state, ambassadors, and military officials.
Woosty,
We differ again.
“This scenario STINKS of scapegoat….this poor sod is getting thrown to the mob.”
Sure it does. That is its purpose, and he by his actions and his whole lifetime deeds deserves to be thrown not to the mob, but to the tax collectors.
But he IS being thrown out to be bespotted as a support seeking gesture. Never seen that done before to energize a movement?
We know that most of the rich do not earn anything. It is inherited. Or a matter of being in the right place and being the right geek is a matter of chance, that and hiring good people and lawyers to insure it will grow. Bill Gates is a good example.
Rich do not earn anything, they own markers, which they trade in in the right circumstances, or which appreciate 17 times in 2 years, remember Sheldon of Las Vegaa and former Portogese colony fame?
This French guy is serving as a scapegoat for the corporate mistreatment of our societies and the world itself.
And movements, to activate people, need a POSTER CHILD!
Be it Arnault, Tojo, Hitler, Saddam Hussein, the unspellable Libyan leader, etc.
Corporations mey be legally persons, but visualizing them is difficult. Getting excited by their deeds is even more difficult.
The dumb Swede who fronted for BP will not do well as an image for BP. Better ones are needed. And this is a try on the part of the French Left. A left that is worthy of the name.
Let us wish them well. And let us examine this issue, not the poster childs fate, Mssr Arnault.
JT taking issue, using this man as an example of a mistreated (?) person, is intellectually dishonest IMHO.
A good way to revive the issue of the 75 percent tax, albeit. He provides a link to it. For all I know I disagreed with his take or non-take. Never mind, re-read it yourself.
That is the real issue. This man is not being led to the guillotine as in 1789, he is just trying to evade taxes. A simple thief. He wants to enjoy the fruits, but desires not to pay his share ot the taxes as majority rule decides it is to be.
@MacK: The vast majority of taxes support the military (which is what lets you have a country), social security, Medicare, welfare, the legal justice systems, schools, universities, police, roads, health inspectors, building inspectors, drug inspectors, aircraft inspectors, OSHA, investors, and on and on.
Taxes do support the country, and infrastructure, they create the environment that lets the vast majority of Americans have safety on the job and sleep without a weapon by their side in a barricaded fortress.
@MacK: I already share that information with the IRS on a regular basis. I would be perfectly happy paying higher taxes on all of my income above, say, an average wage deductible (ie only those earning more than average support the government, and people earning the average wage or less pay zero income taxes).
I would end up paying quite a bit more, I imagine, but I think it would be the fair way to tax.
@Woosty: I advocated the same thing for businesses; they should not be allowed to USE the country without paying their fair share of the maintenance of the country, in the form of taxes.
All you who shop at IKEA should realize that besides enjoying the fruits of slave labor, our household included, that you support bloos-sucking capitalism.
And the sole owner of IKEA, Ingmar Kamprad, has long since moved his company’s seat out of it’s place of origin.
He lives in Switzerland. Depriving him of some taxes on his holdings in Sweden, where he started, would not faze him.
Do you think that the one percent are not prepared for this contingence?***
Enough on this depressing theme.
***I suspect that they even have a plan for the case of losing control of Congress to the people.
To all the previous commenters on the kick em out and don’t let them back in slant….what is your thought on the off-shoring of profit and loss by the Companies that come to a Country and then leave if they can’t have a free (or whored up even)ride?
Why isn’t it ok for a wealthy person to leave and avoid taxes but it is ok for Companies to do that and more? This scenario STINKS of scapegoat….this poor sod is getting thrown to the mob.
There is a line between free speech as an expression of thought and the kind of speech that is designed or leads to the risk of harm of the target of that speech.
For the press to sink to such crass expression will absolutely lead to the excitation of those dull and brainless thugs that will take that sort of sentiment as permission to commit violence. That is not the same as free speech.
I haven’t seen the film implicated in the death of the American Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, by a mob at the Libyan consulate …..but I read that its locus is in a film that mocked the Muslim religion. We are in a time where tolerance is absent, economics are enslaving and people are being pushed to extremes just for survival. How phucking stupid for a paper to print such an inflammatory headline.
Bron – what color is the sky in your world?
If “The nature of man is to not work if you dont get properly rewarded.” why do these rich people expect workers to get by on less and less every year? Despite the lowest tax rate since WWII they continue to reduce wages and eliminate benefits and still expect workers to hug them.
If you look at the “socialist nonsense” currently being played out in Europe you will find that France, Germany and all of Scandinavia fell less and recovered more quickly than the US. All the while providing services that, while lifting all its citizens, creating less income inequality and greater economic mobility than you will find here in slash-and-burn capitalistic America.
But you keep chasing that chicken, some day you might just catch it
Tony C. could you please post your real info so that we can tax you 75 percent of the profit you make while living in this country. Sure it is an absurd amount, but it is better then taking it all. In fact why not give it all in support of the government, because that is what taxes support not the country itself.
if you have a job, hug a rich person.
I cannot wait to see what the world looks like under this socialist nonsense. We are getting a clue in the US and Europe.
Good bye rich people, hello Soviet style economy.
The nature of man is to not work if you dont get properly rewarded. Or to work just enough to get by. Since everything now days is reduced to biology, is there a “fairness” gene at work? Or do rational individuals with self esteem just refuse to work as slaves?
P.S. All countries should do something similar, if a change of citizenship results in tax avoidance, regardless of the purported reason for the change, bar the individual from enjoying any fruits of the country they refuse to support.
The same thing goes for taxes of foreign companies doing business in a country; they should be required to keep a separate accounting of all business in that country and pay taxes on that, they should not be allowed to commit the fraud of moving profits to island nations and undeveloped wilderness that they have bribed to tax them a few million instead of a few billion.
What one earns in a country should be taxed by that country, and that is something that any country can do unilaterally for itself.
“Get lost rich jerk” is a populist exclamation we can expect to be unleashed everywhere as things get curiouser and curiouser when more of the anti-elite sentiments rise to the surface.
I think the solution for France is simple; anybody that renounces their French citizenship should be barred from the country; not allowed to live there, visit there, own property or do business there in any way.
Still want to leave?