Leaving France To Lower Tax
Super Tax
One of the world’s most famous Frenchmen, Gérard Depardieu, is in the process of giving up his French passport and is now a Russian, after Vladimir Putin personally granted him citizenship on 3rd January.
It’s fairly clear the main attraction of Depardieu’s new domicile is its 13% flat income tax rate, since the actor has been flamboyantly fulminating for ages about French president François Hollande’s plans to introduce a supertax.
The French prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, has called Depardieu’s machinations “unpatriotic” and “pathetic”. Simply berating the wealthy for not being noble and unselfish enough to put others before themselves is a less than perfect practical approach, despite its popularity. The French government is being typically ambivalent in despising Depardieu for leaving, while desiring to enact the policies that are driving him away.
By the way, Gérard Depardieu has become a trendsetter of tax avoidance. Weeks after the former Oscar nominee left France for Russia in a showy demonstration that involved impassioned open letters and a semi-embarrassing hero’s greeting involving pancakes and kittens—former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, his wife Carla Bruni, and Bernard Arnault—“France’s Richest Man”—are reportedly also considering leaving their homeland in response to the country’s proposed “millionaire’s tax”.
The Times of London reports that Sarkozy is “sounding out investors” for a private-equity fund he would like to establish in Britain. Sarkozy has previously revealed that after his political career, he’d like to concentrate on personal-wealth building. While a spokesman for Sarkozy has denied that the former president is moving to London, she would not comment on the report that Sarkozy is attempting to establish a private-equity fund there.
In other France-fleeing rumors, the Guardian reports that French business magnate Bernard Arnault—who is estimated to be the world’s 14th richest person with a $29.5 billion net worth—has applied for Belgian nationality. The head of the luxury-goods company Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy, Arnault is also believed to have transferred his stake in the family group that controls L.V.M.H “to a firm set up for the purpose in Belgium, where taxes are lower.” A spokesman for the 63-year-old billionaire claims that Arnault was not trying to evade the potential tax but simply wanted to “preserve the company in case he died suddenly.”
As for Depardieu, was so taken with the Russian countryside outside Moscow that he bought a plot of land in Belye Stolby and directed a tabloid-friendly state official to build him a home. “When he saw our countryside, birch trees, ponds with wild ducks swimming on them, where you can go fishing, he decided to settle here,” Nikolai Borodachev, director of the state film archive Gosfilmofond, dished to a Russian magazine recently. “And he asked me to start building a big beautiful house, which has to be made of wood.”
Its just a matter of time, that we will see an exodus of people leaving USA.
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