FINANCIAL TIMES: France’s socialist government has delivered on its pledge to make big companies and the wealthy bear the brunt of an unprecedented budget crackdown in 2013, including a 75 per cent tax band.
But Paris acknowledged that its growth forecast for 2013, which underpins its target of reducing the budget deficit to 3 per cent of gross domestic product next year, was more optimistic than many independent projections.
As promised by François Hollande, the president, the budget largely spared the French the kinds of hefty cuts in public spending and employment, pensions and salaries imposed in other eurozone countries struggling to contain their sovereign debt. “Austerity rejected,” read a bullet point on one presentation slide…
The 75 per cent measure – which Jean-Marc Ayrault, the prime minister, insisted on Thursday that most high earners were willing to pay – will affect only about 2,000-3,000 people and raise a relatively small sum. A new 45 per cent marginal income tax rate will apply to earned income above €150,000 a year. Wealth taxes will rise and taxes on interest, dividends and capital gains will be aligned with income tax rates… (more)
