The tax-avoiding attraction of Belgium for the French rich is nothing new. But since the arrival of France’s socialist president, François Hollande, who has announced a 75% tax on those earning an annual 1 million euros or more, the country’s wealthy have begun pointing north. While speculation continues to surround the motivations of Bernard Arnault, founder and chief executive of French luxury goods group LVMH and France’s richest individual, in applying for Belgian nationality, the controversy has fuelled a lively debate in Belgium itself over the country’s growing status as a semi-tax haven. Mediapart’s Brussels correspondent Ludovic Lamant reports on the rich figures of a tax-avoiding exodus that, continent-wide, is estimated to annually cost European states 150 billion euros.
Earlier this month it was revealed that French tycoon Bernard Arnault, chief executive of luxury goods firm LVMH, the wealthiest person in France and the fourth wealthiest worldwide, has applied for dual Belgian nationality. The French conservative opposition was quick to cite it as an example of the flight of capital that will follow higher taxes the government is to impose on the country’s top income earners, while President François Hollande decried Arnault's lack of patriotism. Mediapart Editor-in-Chief Edwy Plenel sets out here how tax evasion has become a colossal and insitutionalised business at the centre of the economy. Fighting it has never been more urgent, yet little effort - if any - is being made to prevent it or to sanction those who are bleeding society of vital resources.
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