From Reuters: President
Francois Hollande's Socialist government unveiled sharp tax hikes on
business and the rich on Friday in a 2013 budget aimed at showing France has the fiscal rigor to remain at the core of the euro zone.
The package will recoup 30
billion euros ($39 billion) for the public purse with a goal of
narrowing the deficit to 3.0 percent of national output next year from
4.5 percent this year - France's toughest single belt-tightening in 30
years.
But with record unemployment
and a barrage of data pointing to economic stagnation, there are fears
the deficit target will slip as France falls short of the modest 0.8
percent economic growth rate on which it is banking for next year.
The
budget disappointed pro-reform lobbyists by merely freezing France's
high public spending rather than daring to attack ministerial budgets as
Spain did this week as it battles to avoid the conditions of an international bailout.
T
o the dismay of business leaders who fear an
exodus of top talent, the government confirmed a temporary 75 percent
super-tax rate for earnings over one million euros and a new 45 percent band for revenues over 150,000 euros.
Together,
those two measures are predicted to bring in around half a billion
euros. Higher tax rates on dividends and other investments, plus cuts to
existing tax breaks are seen bringing in several billion more.
Business
will be hit with measures including a cut in the amount of loan
interest which is tax-deductible and the cutting of an existing tax
break on capital gains from certain share sales - moves worth around
four billion and two billion euros each.
"The
government is impeding investment and so will block innovation,"
Entrepreneurs Club head Guillaume Cairou said of the preference for
raising taxes rather than cutting spending.
"France is sick because of the model it has ... but is choosing to preserve it."
Four
months after he defeated Nicolas Sarkozy, Hollande's approval ratings
are in free-fall as many French feel he has been slow to get to grips
with the economic slow-down and unemployment at a 10-year high and
rising. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/28/us-france-budget-idUSBRE88R0AK20120928
Many of France's rich are already fleeing France so, the French government will not get very much money from the rich. There will also be a brain drain as these people go to high paying jobs elsewhere, leaving lesser qualified people to do the job.
Th liberals don't get it- it's not the revenue that is the problem to most financial problems, it's the spending.
Sunrise — 6:39, 6:42, 6:43.
6 hours ago
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