Last day of work before Christmas holidays. Shopping is done, house is decorated, I'm going to sit around the house for the next four days and do absolutely fucking NOTHING. I might not even put on pants. To my boss, who just threw a stupid request on my desk "URGENT URGENT DUE BY COB":
Since we're talking a bit about France, Gerard Depardieu has renounced his French citizenship and moved to Belgium due to high taxes. In a letter to France's PM, Depardieu states that over the past 45 years, he has paid $190 million in taxes and for 2012, he paid 85% of the year's income in taxes.
It's totally insane. The guy is as French as it gets. He portrayed every single important character in French history/litterature and he's been in so many culturally significant movies it's mind-boggling. He's an icon. He's even got his own vineyard. If that guy got fed up with France, the country is in big trouble*. * In other news, I get more and more reports from people who traveled there or lived there that France is as fast-sinking ship. Socialism bordering on communism and ridiculous amounts of bureaucracy are killing the economy really fast. I lived there for a while 7 years ago and even then I kept joking about how no one ever worked there. It's impossible to fire anyone, nothing ever stays open late or on the weekends (shops even close earlier on the days before holidays), you can't get under 4 weeks vacation by law (I tend to like that one though), tax rates are so high it's not worth it working hard because it all goes to the government, etc. Apparently, it's gotten worse since then. With that and the shitty integration of immigrants for the last 60 years, the place is going to fall apart pretty soon.
This seems pretty unlikely as the marginal tax rate is at most 75% and that is only on money above and beyond $1.28M. It is even more unlikely as that 75% tax rate has not yet gone into effect, and the previous cap was 41%. Even if we were to suppose that he earned $5M last year and that 75% tax were in effect, his income tax burden would still be in the 60s overall. It only inches north of 70% once he is in the ballpark of $10M income. He's also a business owner, but the French corporate tax is 33%. So I'd like to see the documentation for how he got up to 85%.
The 75% tax rate is just for income and may or may not include local taxes and/or payroll taxes (I have no idea how their taxes work) he's probably just saying that 85% of his gross income went to the government in taxes which probably include income taxes, wealth taxes (maybe he even counted how much he paid in explicit sales taxes?) etc... If France works anything like the US then any money he takes out himself would be taxed at his personal rate, only money staying with the company would be taxed at 33%.
Right, but like I said, the 75% rate doesn't even exist as of yet. It was only proposed this fall. Maybe there are enough local taxes to make up for it. I'm just saying this is an extraordinary state of affairs given France's actual tax rates, and every media source is merely repeating his numbers with no independent research or documentation. Anyone can claim they pay 85% in taxes in their kiss-off manifesto, that doesn't make it so. And if France is like the US, few corporations actually pay the full corporate tax rate.
Who knows, maybe they tax the shit out of prostitution? I imagine that's where a lot of his disposable income goes. I'm just saying it might be possible when you add it all up... or maybe he's a nutbag.
There is a ''wealth tax'' in France. People with a net worth of over 16 540 000 euros pay 1.80% of their net assets in taxes annually. I can see it bumping his overall tax rate to 85%.
In more important news, damn you Amex, damn you straight to hell! <a class="postlink" href="http://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/2012/rumors-true-amex-blue-cash-capping-grocery-rewards-6000/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/2012/rum ... ards-6000/</a>
So then he's not paying it on his income, and its size relative to his income is irrelevant. That makes as much as sense as me quoting an American billionaire's tax rate by comparing his annual income taxes to his net wealth, and then saying "Wow, Bill Gates only paid a 0.1% tax rate this year!"
I think we're all missing the real point: Perfect Christmas song. Warms my cock...les of my heart. Oh my jesusfuck: NSFCMC Fucking French people.
I think I'm going to find some small island in the South Pacific and set up my own country and invite all the billionaires in the world to transfer their citizenship to it, for the low price of, say 20%, of their net worth, 0% income tax from then on and then take all that money and set up a data haven like in Cryptonomicon and spend the rest of my days giving the rest of the world the finger while I scour the world for attractive and slutty female accountants and IT profesionals to keep track of all of the money/data. We'll have free health care, too.