Americans were spared an unpleasant fate, too. A last-minute compromise in Congress averted a dive off the “fiscal cliff” and annulled severe tax increases that had been scheduled on earned income, dividends, interest and capital gains.
If taxpayers take these near misses as signs that their burdens are easing, they may be disappointed. The French ruling in late December was based on a technicality, and the government has vowed to tweak the law and try again. As for the deal in Washington on New Year’s Day, it did not let everyone off scot-free; an estimated three-fourths of all taxpayers received an increase of some sort, most through the expiration of a payroll tax reduction.
The two-year payroll tax break of two percentage points was intended to stimulate economic growth, as were various tax concessions enacted in Europe during the financial crisis. They, too, are being rolled back by cash-strapped governments, creating de facto tax increases. The moves indicate that while officials continue to declare that the rich are their primary target, their sights are shifting to the comfortable and to the multitudes just getting by.
“If you look at the middle class, they’re paying the bill at the moment,” said Marnix van Rij, a partner at Ernst Young who is its head of global personal tax services. “All over Europe we saw huge stimulus plans. Governments tried to keep expenditures at a certain level, while introducing tax incentives to keep consumption and investment going. They have canceled all of these temporary tax incentives and at the same time started to increase rates and broaden the tax base. It’s really a time of austerity here.”
The need to extract more from the middle class is a matter of simple arithmetic. A wealthy taxpayer has more money than someone of modest means, but there are far fewer wealthy taxpayers to tap, and doing so is not easy, as the recent episode in France shows.
The Constitutional Council, which serves a role similar to that of the U.S. Supreme Court, struck down the bill mandating the 75 percent rate on the ground that it applied to individuals instead of households, as French law requires. A bigger problem with enforcing such a heavy tax liability, as President François Hollande discovered, is that many rich taxpayers literally will not sit still for it.
Wealthy French are taking up residence in Britain, Belgium and Switzerland; some are also seeking foreign citizenship, including high-profile figures like the actor Gérard Depardieu and the luxury-goods magnate Bernard Arnault.
Mr. Hollande’s government intends to rewrite the law in a way that withstands constitutional scrutiny, but Michael Graetz, a professor at Yale University Law School, wonders whether it will happen. The exodus of wealthy taxpayers and the prospect that more will choose to leave than pay a 75 percent tax present “a deeper conundrum than many people realized,” he said.
Ian Shane, a tax lawyer at the New York firm Golenbock Eiseman Assor Bell Peskoe, predicts that little additional revenue will be generated even if the high rate goes into effect, but as he sees it, that may suit the French authorities just fine. He finds the law to be a matter of public relations as much as public policy.
“They’ve got to be seen to hammer people who are rich,” Mr. Shane said. “Governments know that to get real money, they have to tax people at the bottom of the pyramid, but they have to make a play at taxing the rich while they’re really mugging the poor.”
Some policy specialists contend that a new European tax on financial transactions accomplishes that feat. It is aimed at banks and financial speculators, but it could end up being borne by ordinary account holders.
The tax — one-tenth of 1 percent of the value of stock and bond trades and one-hundredth of 1 percent of the value of derivative trades — is to be implemented next January. It is expected to apply in 11 of the 27 European Union countries, including Germany and France but not Britain.
The tax is promoted as a way to curb volatility in financial markets and bring in annual revenue of about €35 billion, or $45 billion. Critics say it will shift trading elsewhere, to London and New York, for instance, and therefore be less effective than hoped and a financial and bookkeeping burden to banks and asset managers.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/27/business/global/taxing-the-wealthy-is-not-so-easy.html?partner=rss&emc=rss