About That 75% Tax Rate on High Earners In France

I never understood the issue (despite it sounding so simple: 75% tax on millionaires) and never knew the specifics. This most recent Financial Times article succinctly wraps it up; maybe past stories did so, also, and I simply failed to read them.

Be that as it may, here are the data points:

• the new French president stuck to his manifesto: 75% tax on individuals with incomes greater than one million euros
• the French "Supreme Court" struck down the law just before it was to go into effect because historically, rates were based on "household" income, not "individual" income (think marriage tax in reverse: a married couple both earning 750,000 euros were below the threshold; an individual earning 1.5 million euros was above it) 
• the old law affected about 1,000 individuals
• just changing the wording to "households" earning more than one million euros would affect more than 10,000 people; and the French president can't accept that

Somehow there seems to be a bit of irony in all that. It's okay in France to capriciously and arbitrarily dun 1,000 people but not 10,000 people.

The easy answer, it seems, is moving the threshhold to two million euros for households, but then the "bachelors" / "bachelorettes" and widows / widowers get away with a huge tax advantage over their married millionaire neighbors.

And so it goes. Something to think about, 45 days before our own "April 15th."