President Francois Hollande's government on Monday announced cuts in tax breaks for rich households as part of a plan to reduce the huge cost of France's generous family benefits system, reports Reuters.
The changes will stop short of cutting allowances outright for high-earning families, as some officials had wanted.
Instead, the bulk of the savings will come from reducing the income tax exemptions that wealthy parents can claim according to the number of the children they have.
The Socialist government aims to save 2 billion euros ($2.59 billion) annually from 2016 with belt-tightening measures, though some new spending means the net savings will be 1.7 billion euros.
That will not go a long way towards reducing the overall budget deficit but the move sends a signal to France's European Union partners that it is prepared to make politically sensitive reforms, having been given two extra years to meet a budget deficit goal of 3 percent of output.
"It is perfectly possible to reduce our deficit while preserving the core of our social model," Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told reporters as he presented the plan.
Read more of this Reuters report published by Yahoo! News.