France's super-rich bands together in petition for higher taxes

CODDLING THE SUPER-RICH, CTD: You probably remember the Buffett-Gates entente for the purposes of establishing higher taxes for the super-rich (them), and Buffett's op-ed in the Times on the issue, among other calls for tax increases. Now some of France's wealthy individuals are banding together in the form of a petition for the cause.

A group of 16 of the richest people in France has signed a petition asking the French government to increase their taxes. The group includes Liliane Bettencourt, the billionaire heiress of L’Oreal; Christophe de Margerie, the head of oil giant Total; Frederic Oudea of bank Société Générale; and Jean-Cyril Spinetta, president of Air France KLM SA. (Given SocGen’s share price, Mr. Oudea may not have as much wealth to tax). The group says the government should create a “special contribution” that would target the rich. “We are conscious of having benefited from a French system and a European environment that we are attached to and which we hope to help maintain,” the petition said.

You may be aware that I'm categorically in opposition to a 'special contribution' tax of any kind (one must admire the fantastically euphemistic words used, by the way), but am instead an advocate for a flat tax rate, coupled with a policy of lower income tax and higher GST. Consumption tax – on that note – is, in my view, perhaps one of the fairer kinds of taxes in that there is an abject lack of loopholes, which I consider to be the true source of injustice in our current tax system. People who exploit opportunities to escape taxation do so at the detriment of others who must pay in their stead. Given that the poor rarely pay much in terms of taxes (because they have so little to give), the people who ultimately become victims of loopholes are those in the middle class. As I have said before, the spreaders of injustice are not the rich, and the cause of poverty is not greed. Equally, government is not bad; individuals, though, are better.