13,335 MILLIONAIRES PAY NEGATIVE OR ZERO INCOME TAX

Focus on figures presented to the French Senate Finance Committee concerning wealthy taxpayers. It contrasts Amélie de Montchalin’s statement with documents said to show that 13,335 millionaires pay negative or zero income tax, before linking the controversy to wider concerns about wealth inequality and future inheritance transfers.

By an unfortunate coincidence, the Senate Finance Committee was examining precisely that issue. A day later, Senator Jean-François Husson, the committee’s spokesperson, dropped a bombshell with a report stating that more than 13,000 millionaires—more than thirteen thousand, not one less—don’t pay a single kopek in income tax.

You might say that’s logical, given that taxes were originally collected by the nobility and paid only by the lowly, the nobodies, the common people—the producers of everything—the Third Estate. The nobility and the clergy—God bless them—didn’t pay a single penny, not even the cost of their Sunday best.

I know you like your coffee strong… but they’ve really gone overboard here—check this out:

“Documents submitted by the Ministry of Finance to the Senate Finance Committee reveal that 13,335 millionaires pay negative or zero income tax.”

Negative tax means the government is giving them back money they never paid!!

The comments weren’t long in coming…

“Emmanuel Macron’s nomination of Amélie de Montchalin to head the Court of Auditors was already a democratic scandal, casting doubt on the Court’s independence and tainting its work with serious suspicions of a conflict of interest, against a troubling backdrop of Emmanuel Macron and his friends stifling independent institutions. Amélie de Montchalin’s lie only adds to that scandal.”

You know how it is… people are just mean.

In any case, one thing explains the other: wealth inequality among the French is growing at a rapid pace. Ten percent of households own 55 percent of the national wealth. How about that? The richest one percent holds 25 percent—doesn’t that make you sad? And, as those in the know warn, all of this could be amplified by an unprecedented wave of inheritance transfers over the next 15 years.