French rich want taxes raised to help economy

SOME of France’s richest people, including the billionaire heiress of L’Oreal and the head of oil major Total, urged the government to tax them more to help solve the country’s financial problems.

In a petition published on the website of weekly magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, company executives, business leaders and super-rich individuals called for the creation of a “special contribution” that would target wealth without forcing the rich to quit France for overseas tax havens.

The petition, whose signatories included L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt and Total chief Christophe de Margerie, follows a call by US billionaire Warren Buffett for US authorities to raise taxes on himself and other ultra-high earners to contribute to austerity efforts.

President Nicolas Sarkozy is already planning to axe some tax exemptions that benefit the wealthy as he seeks some €5 billion to €10 billion in extra revenue in the 2012 budget following a market rout that highlighted concern over public finances.

Budget Minister Valérie Pécresse said the government was working on a new contribution from taxpayers earning more than €1 million a year.

“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,” said the petition, signed by chief executives including Maurice Lévy of advertising company Publicis Group, Frederic Oudéa of bank Société Générale and Jean-Cyril Spinetta, president of Air France KLM.

Gilles Carrez, a member of the parliamentary budget committee for the ruling UMP party, has said that a levy of 2% on those with annual revenue of more than €1m would affect some 30,000 people and would bring in about €300m for state coffers.