Billionaires’ Last Stand Against France

When 2% Wealth Tax Feels Like the Guillotine

From my Berlin workspace at bohiney.com, I’ve been following France’s proposed 2% wealth tax on billionaires, which has sparked reactions suggesting someone threatened to revive the guillotine. French billionaires are treating economist Gabriel Zucman’s modest tax proposal like it’s the Reign of Terror 2.0: Electric Boogaloo. The wealthy are preparing their last stand against what they call “confiscatory taxation” and what economists call “asking them to contribute slightly more.”

The Zucman tax proposal is straightforward: a 2% annual levy on wealth exceeding one billion euros. That’s it. Not 50%. Not 90%. Two percent. And only on amounts OVER a billion. For context, if you have €5 billion, you’d pay €80 million annually—leaving you with a tragic €4.92 billion. Charities worldwide are preparing benefit concerts to support these victims of barely-noticeable taxation.

French billionaires have responded with the subtlety of a revolution-era aristocrat complaining about bread prices. “This is the death of entrepreneurship,” declared one fictional luxury goods magnate worth €12 billion. “If I have to pay 2%, what’s my incentive to innovate?” When reminded that his fortune comes from selling handbags made by workers earning minimum wage, he clarified: “Exactly. I’m the job creator here. Tax me and those workers suffer.” It’s trickle-down economics but in reverse—threaten the wealthy and suddenly they’re very concerned about workers they’ve spent careers underpaying.

The threatened exodus is particularly entertaining. “I’ll move to Switzerland,” warn French billionaires, apparently unaware that Switzerland also taxes wealth and has been doing so for decades. “I’ll go to Monaco,” threatens another, ignoring that Monaco is approximately the size of a Walmart parking lot and already full of other tax refugees. “I’ll leave Europe entirely,” declares a third, which… okay? The threat of billionaires leaving carries weight only if you believe their presence is more valuable than the tax revenue they’re avoiding.

Economists supporting the Zucman tax point out that 2% is historically modest. Post-World War II tax rates on the wealthy reached 90% in America. French revolutionaries had a 100% tax rate on aristocratic heads. By comparison, asking billionaires to contribute 2% of their wealth annually seems downright generous. “We’re not eating the rich,” explained one fictional economist. “We’re not even nibbling. We’re asking them to maybe skip one yacht purchase every decade or two. The horror.”

The creative accounting has already begun. French billionaires are discovering previously unknown charitable commitments, suddenly remembering they’re actually residents of tax havens they visit twice a year, and valuing their assets in ways that would make Trump’s Mar-a-Lago ballroom assessment look conservative. “My €3 billion in assets? Actually worth €500 million when you account for… vibes,” explained one. Tax authorities are unimpressed but also understaffed and outgunned by billionaire accounting teams, so we’ll see how enforcement goes.

What makes this satirical scenario perfect is the contrast between actual struggles and billionaire complaints. French workers face pension cuts, rising costs, and stagnant wages. Billionaires face a 2% wealth tax and act like they’re being sent to the Bastille. The disconnect is so vast it’s almost performance art. As someone watching from Berlin—where wealth taxes exist and society hasn’t collapsed—I can confirm that billionaires complaining about 2% is exactly as absurd as it sounds.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/billionaires-last-stand/

SOURCE: Bohiney Magazine (Öko Angebot)

AUTHOR: Öko Angebot