Yes, he still has it. Great acting.

It’s called paying your fair share of taxes. The ordinary French are already taxed nearly 100%. Perhaps the EU should consider enacting new directives to prevent trading with the EU from a tax haven unless a person pays a special exile tax.

Mark, paying 75% is called “paying your fair share”? Intriguing.

well mark, the tax people pay nowadays is good beyond ‘fair share’, why would i work my life away to fund the elites lifestyle? tax dodging has become rampant for a reason, greed.

*gone*

Lets shit on people that have done well for themselves in Ireland.

U2, Enya etc, as a country the majority just like to bitch, moan and shit on anyone that has succeeded in life. well done.

Diarmaid, perhaps you should go to Russia?

@ Eircomsucks, Maybe you’d prefer if Eircom went or are you only allowed bitch??

It was said tongue in cheek Eircom, relax will ya!

Don’t think I ever mentioned Enya either, but don’t let that stop you, ironically, having a moan of your own!

Well complain about people who enjoy the benefits of the society that allowed them to flourish but who do not wish to contribute what they can afford!

Sorry Eircom…you lost me at Enya

It is a modest contribution. Even after 75% tax of an income of €1 million, you still walk away with €250,000 – hardly “much tax”.

Because the only time taxes for the rich were above 70% we enjoyed about 40 years of consistent prosperity, completely flying in the face of all economic “boom-bust” models. Also, the dole bashing is getting old.

@Mark, do you listen to yourself, if i make 1 million euros by running a business etc, you expect me to be happy with walking away with 250k from that while the government take 750k! lol, na, push on mate with your opinion.

@MrKnow
Its funny you mentioned business owner, as its better for you in the long run.

First of all, as presumably you may not have started with much, a tax system leaning more heavily on the rich would have made it easier for you to gather the initial capital in the first place.

Then you would have a less financially strapped consumer base (assuming you’re not dealing in uper class commodities), so the chances of your business failing due to lack of potential customers would be lower.

Then there’s the fact that high taxes on the rich leads to a more stable and sustainable economy, so the chances of a recession like this one coming along and wiping you out are a lot smaller too.

So yeah, as a business owner you should be very happy, its very cheap job security in the long term.

40 years of consistent prosperity? When was this? lol.

From the 30s to the 70s. Mainly in the US and Europe. Wall Street crashed in 1929, people are still arguing as to why but one theory is too little regulation of the market. Regulation on the financial industry was tightened, taxes for the rich were jacked up, at one point they hit 94% on the top band. Things wen’t great, then there was a stagnation (not a recession, just a standstill) throughout the 70s. then Thatcher and Reagan came to power at roughly the same time, and started deregulating the finance industry and cutting taxes for the rich to “free the wealth of the entrepreneur”. Things went fine for a while, initially because the market was flooded with new money, then later because banks just loaned cheap money for years, then inevitably it all went to sh1t, and here we are now. This whole economic problem is a huge “I told you so” for people who favoured high taxes for the rich back in the day.

From the 30′s to the 70′s??!

Ireland’s exports collapsed during the 30′s thanks to Dev’s moronic economic ignorance. Widespread poverty. The 1940’s saw thousands of Irish volunteer to fight in the second world war…because it was so prosperous. The 1950’s…when my dad’s entire generation was forced to emigrate…again thanks to this consistent prosperity…and finally to the 1960’s…where huge swathes of the population still didn’t have running water.

You look too young for senile nostalgia but it wouldn’t hurt you to read a history book every so often…or even just talk to an older person.

40 years of prosperity? Yeah. I suppose the summers were great back then too.

Oh…and here’s a shocker for you. The 1930’s weren’t too great in USA…or else that Steinbeck chap was full of crap.

They had a name for the 1930’s in the USA…

lol

Most of what you’re referring to there Tom is not Ireland going through a sequence of recessions, but instead just being consistently poor for most of its existence. And yes the start of the 1930s was bad, and although quality of life and things were probably pretty crap until the 40s, the economy started to recover before the mid 30s; the economic thinking was sound.

I’ve read a moderate amount of history, and I’m trying to talk to older people but all I get back are lols are patronising smiley faces :) And since its pretty clear neither of us will convince the other I’m gonna call it a day, maybe if France sticks to its guns one of us can claim an I told you so in the future.

Mark, go to work for 5 days. Work until Thursday lunchtime for free, and then take a salary just for Friday and Thursday evening. On Friday night, do you feel yet he fruits of your labour have been fairly divided?

Depardieu’s departure is only the tip of the iceberg. France is experiencing the largest flight of its own citizens since WW2.
London has seen a huge influx of French nationals. New businesses started to facilitate the new arrivals include a French language radio station.
Belgium, Switzerland, and Singapore appear to be favoured destinations.
In some ways mirroring the mass economic migration from Ireland courtesy, also, of government incompetence.

Why should he be ashamed? Over his career he has paid in excess of 190million euro. He has contributed more than most. This penalising of successful people is outrageous. I agree with a rich tax, perhaps 50 % of everything over a million. This would be fair

That’s 190 million in taxes

@Sean

And if they leave, so what? Either other countries will follow suit, so they’ll eventually have nowhere to go. Or the fact that there is less physical money in France’s economy will just serve to increase the buying power of the money that’s left in the hands of the remaining lower and middle classes. And just because other countries are welcoming them with open arms doesn’t mean they’re right to do so. It just means they’re like minded with the same people who don’t want them to leave.

@Cholly
Paying taxes doesn’t amount to punishment. Trust me, Depardieu’s entire life is about acting, he would have done it anyway regardless of the money involved, so who’s to say he deserves to be payed that much? Acting/theater/music are all topsy turvy industries anyway, for every Depardieu there are a hundred other talented people that can’t even make a living out of it, he is successful, but you have to admit he’s also lucky. And even if you to think that tax is a punishment, I think it’s pretty fair to punish luck.

Tax in France like most countries is based on Income. How much income has he earned to say he has paid 190 million in taxes? I would say 400 million if not more !!!

Sounds a lot I know but look it up. He wrote an open letter to French prime minister, in it he said that he wasn’t unworthy or Unpatriotic and that in the past 45 years he has paid in excess of €145 million dollars in taxes ($190m) and employed 80 people in various companies. I stand by what I say. I don’t believe 75 % rich tax is fair and punishes high earners. I think 50% is more than fair for salaries over 1 million

It also works both ways: Imagine if every citizen started shopping up in the six counties? Your job would see a massive increase in taxes or worse. Your industry is not immune from an exodus to cheaper destinations. Tax exiles show their disloyalty to their country and their customers normally boycott them.

I don’t think taxing somebody amounts to sh1tting all over them. And most people in Ireland who have made shed loads of cash have done so on the back of a generous university education system and a society that spends a lot of money trying to maintain a healthy level of social mobility (or at least used to). Then there’s luck, granted a lot of rich people have worked hard but so have a lot of people who never made it big. And the obvious fact that a lot of wealth is hereditary.

We can pretend every millionaire is a self-made grafter who worked a hundred times harder than everybody else, against the odds in some slum with the theme tune of Rocky playing in the background, but in reality it’s usually not the case.

Those damn socialists, with their fairness and equality…

Socialism , equality through poverty and oppression.

I don’t remember oppression being a tenet of socialism, that’s usually a trait of fascism masquerading as socialism.

But either way, extra tax doesn’t by any stretch of the imagination account to a war on the rich. This is becoming an increasingly unpopular view when we’re looking at the rich as our economic saviours, worshipping the “wealth creators” and “entrepreneurs” while being spoonfed episodes of The Apprentice, but most rich people are either lucky (in having a talent currently over valued by society, like footballing skill, or a degree in a career that comes into fashion, like finance, or by simply being noticed when others aren’t, like in the arts) or born into wealth, which makes making your own a lot of easier (I guess this could count as luck too). Granted a lot of rich people do work hard, but they often do so from a nice starting point, and extra tax is essentially a redistribution of not just wealth, but luck.

Redistribution of anyones wealth/ luck / anything is not a decision you should get to make, socialism forces the “rich” into giving over the fruits of their labour to others , it is a non mutual agreement enforced by a government body (police , revenue etc.. ) into giving away what is rightfully theirs.

This man had a choice to increase his freedom, keep what he earns instead of giving it away under duress , thats the choice he took , and the choice any other rational person would also make

As a voter and a citizen, it is a choice I get to make. It just depends on how many people agree with me whether or not it happens.

“socialism forces the “rich” into giving over the fruits of their labour to others , it is a non mutual agreement enforced by a government body (police , revenue etc.. ) into giving away what is rightfully theirs.”

As I essentially said above, some body get a lot more fruit for the same amount of labour. And if I replaced “socialism forces the rich” with “society forces people” your sentence would be just as valid. So unless you’re actually advocating getting rid of taxation and just having free market everything I’m not sure what your point is there.

The only things my tax money should pay for are a small dail of one representative per county , police, fire, water and roads.

Everything else should entirely be up to the free market.

Considering it’s the free market that got us into this mess, I don’t see how you plan on that setup working. With more red tape and regulation, neither banks nor developers would have had the freedom to do whatever they wanted, and both the flow of credit and the housing market would have been a lot less stable. Plus with no unemployment benefit whatsoever, Ireland would have been ripped asunder by now.

Thats just poor trolling “red tape” a good thing, 2/10 son

Actually Brendan, socialism got us into this. The idea that “someone will always bail you out” led us to this. In a capitalist society, bondholders would have had to face their loses.

The free market did not get us into this mess. The free market would have told the bondholders to get lost. A corrupted wealthy elite (public sector bosses, politicians, lawyers, doctors, etc) are the ones who got us into this mess.

When the state is taking more of what you earn than what you are, then you are a slave in all but name. The problem with extreme socialism of the type that raises taxation rates to 75%, is that it purports to do so in the name of fairness and equality, but of course once a centralised bureaucracy starts deciding how your earning should be taken from you, it takes very little time for that bureaucracy itself to be corrupted. Nothing changes for the poor, but those connected with the bureaucracy start to siphon off from the trough.

I have nothing against paying my share of tax. But I would leave any country that confiscated 3 times more from my earnings than I myself get. So would any rationale human being.

What the hell is a wealth creator? If by wealth creator you mean someone who creates jobs then the vast majority of them are either self-employed in the lower and middle classes (like tradesman, hairdressers, babysitters etc.), or large existing businesses (like Virgin or Tesco) setting up other businesses. The idea that every job in our economy is owed to us by a millionaire pulling the entrepreneurial strings is a complete myth, and should be treated as such.

So you’d rather collect 75% of zero rather than 12.5% of one million? Cool. :)

Ok we will start with you William. What is your occupation. R u self employed or employed etc.

Sorry Brendan. !!

@Tom
That “if we tax them they’ll just leave” mantra is getting really old, I’ve replied to Sean O’Keeffe somewhere above about that, I’m not going through it again.

@Paul
I’m self-employed (maths grinds, leaving cert and university level) while working my way through college. Although on the back of my self-employment I’ve done a years work in a public secondary school and I’m also working in a university. I didn’t need a “wealth creator” to create the job for me. I spent €20 on an ad in the paper and branched out from there on recommendations.

Brendan…eh…I’m speechless.

I’m genuinely laughing that your comment is posted under an article about a man who is leaving France because the tax is too high.

:)

Any particular reason why?

Surely if you are working in a university you are an employee ?

It accounts for about 25% of my income, the rest comes from still being self employed.

Like most teachers you declare your grinds income !!

It’s an article about a guy who openly says he’s leaving France cause the tax is too high. And you say there’s no evidence it’s because tax is too high. Priceless. :)

@paul
Since I was only working enough to get me through college, I never worked more than about 12 hours a week on average. Taking out any PAYE hours I did for school or university I always found I earned less than my personal tax credits x5, so declaring anything would have been a waste of taxpayers money. Although for some reason I had to pay the teachers unions who were currently campaigning to get rid of unqualified teachers like me, does that count?

@Tom
I’m still not sure what you’re getting at. I’ll readily admit that tax increases will lead to some people leaving, but as I indicated above, it’s not that big a deal.

Don’t stress Brendan. I don’t think you will get it. :)

In fact, I’m certain about it.

Your logic is way off Brendan. You seem to base everything on a belief that an inherent right to other people’s incomes exist. It doesn’t.

Nation building via social transfers has never worked. Generally speaking people are happy to pay a reasonable level of tax however when that goes above a certain point what tends to happen is that people just don’t bother.

This kills innovation and is why the most taxed economies are creatively stagnant. Half the people won’t put the extra effort in because the government will take most of what they produce and a sizeable chuck won’t bother either because they get the benefit of the efforts of others.

The day Sweden produces a Google or a Facebook I’ll stand corrected. I’m not saying we should follow the US model, far from it. We have a marginally more than is fair rate of taxation as it stands. We could and should reduce it a little.

What I mean by not bothering is not bothering to do the extra work. Case in point, someone is offered a promotion and this will entail taking on more responsibility, more time working and putting in more effort. Their company is going to give them (say) an extra 5k for the job. If all they see out of that is 2k a good percentage will rightly not bother as they’re basically working to hand over most of their income to the state.

And before we start talking about millionaires, remember that we don’t have nearly enough of them in Ireland to make any difference. If you want to implement this kind of policy you’d have to target pay in and around the 60k+ point for it to make any difference at a macro level.

“You seem to base everything on a belief that an inherent right to other people’s incomes exist. It doesn’t.”

Surely that’s the essence of income taxation? We’ve been taking portions of people’s income since the creation of governments, even earlier if you count temple offerings. Don’t get me wrong I’m not sitting like a hawk eyeing up other peoples money as if I have an intrinsic right to it, but wealth redistribution exists, we’re just disagreeing over how much there should be.

And Sweden has Volvo, Saab, Ikea, Tetra Pak and Spotify, among many others. Yes a large chunk of multinationals are American, but Sweden does okay.

You may have a point on the promotion idea, but I think a lot of people that take promotions do so for the status or working conditions as opposed to the wage packet. The extra responsibility is a drag for most, but there’s always someone who’ll take it purely for the job title and bigger office.

Brendan,
Saab is on its knees because its costs are too high and at best will have thousands of redundancies and at worst close down entirely. Do you ever read a newspaper?

@Tom
By which time it had been taken over by GM. I was only using it to show that Sweden does produce multinationals. Yes I do, but I haven’t been keeping that up to date with the Scandinavian motor industry, any chance you could reply to me without the insults?

@Brendan Here’s a simple fact that any reading of recent history will support. People will not stand for super taxation very long. Labour tried it in the UK in the 70s and the voters rewarded them with eleven years of Margaret Thatcher and four years of John Major. The Cosgrave government tried to increase already massive taxes and got the worst defeat a sitting government has experienced until FF’s implosion recently. And like it or not, every year the Ahern government cut tax they got voted back in.

With regards to the promotion we do t need to talk about offices and status – we don’t even need to go that far up the ladder. It’s as simple as workers not bothering to do overtime because 60% of a modest enough wage is being taken to give to people who they perceive rightly or wrongly to be not contributing. All this stops economic activity.

The current govt is walking a tightrope with this – pass the tipping point on taxation and you’re out of office.

Lol…there’s quite a few things you’ve missed…chief among them that having punitive taxes does not lead to economic growth.

Really? Well so do your customers! ;-

The Gaul

So you want ALL of the EU to screw everybody?