Would You Leave Your Country Over Taxes?

Gérard Depardieu, one of the most recognizable faces of French cinema, after more than forty years playing French historical figures, has bought a new house in Belgium, for "800,000 according to Le Monde, or a little more than $1 million. It's only 2 kilometers, a little less than a mile and a quarter, over the border from his beloved France.

The announcement of Mr. Depardieu's move has provoked an unprecedented reaction, with politicians on both the left and the right saying that it either underlines the need for - or the dangers of - President François Hollande's tax reforms, which include a marginal tax rate of 75 percent on the portion of a taxpayer's income above "1 million, or $1.3 million.

Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault called Mr. Depardieu out in a highly public manner, saying his move was “minable,” widely translated as “pathetic.” Mr. Depardieu responded with a bracingly personal letter, addressed to Mr. Ayrault, but clearly meant for his countrymen:

I have never shirked my responsibilities. The historic films that I played in attest to my love of France and her history.
People more illustrious than me have gone into [tax] exile or left our country.
I unfortunately have nothing else to do here. But I will continue to love the French and this viewing public with whom I have shared so much emotion! I am leaving because you believe success, creativity, anything different, to be grounds for sanction.
I don't seek approval, but I expect at least to be respected.
No one who has left France has been insulted in the manner I have.
….
I am keeping the spirit of this France that was so beautiful and that I hope will always be.
I relinquish my passport and my Social Security, which I have never claimed. We no longer share a homeland. I am a true European, a citizen of the world, as my father always instilled in me.
…
I am to be neither pitied nor praised, but I reject the term “pathetic.”
Who are you to so judge me, I ask you Mr. Ayrault, prime minister of Mr. Hollande. I ask, who are you? In spite of my excesses, my appetites and my love of life, I am a free man.

Read Rendezvous's translation of the letter in its entirety.

Mr. Depardieu is not alone.

There does not seem to be a significant increase in French citizens emigrating to avoid taxes since Mr. Hollande came to office this year, promising to raise the top tax rate to 75 percent. But one reason may be that there has been a steady movement of the rich out of France since 2001. That year, 384 wealthy French left. In 2011, 717 did.

(Data show that 30 to 40 percent of these migrants have returned.)

Music stars such as Johnny Halliday and actors such as Isabelle Adjani and Alain Delon didn't wait for Mr. Hollande's tax i ncrease to flee the country.

The 75 percent tax will only directly affect an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 workers. But the ISF, the wealth tax, has started to impact many more Frenchmen: an estimated 600,000 in 2012, up from 281,000 in 2001.

The Daily Mail in London, recently reported that recruiters in London are seeing a jump in French candidates for banking and other high-paying jobs.

In the meantime, the battle over Mr. Depardieu continues in France and on the Web.

The left-leaning daily, Libération (the paper that wrote the headline “Beat it, rich jerk!” when industrialist Bernard Arnault left the country) put Mr. Depardieu on its front page Tuesday with the headline “The Manneken Fisc”; a pun on the Manneken Pis, the landmark Brussels sculpture of a boy urinating into a fountain (Mr. Depardieu was arrested last year for urinating on an Air France plane carpet).

A column on Mr. Depardieu in Le Monde opened with a comparison between tax exiles and French aristocrats who fled during the French Revolution.

A piece in Quartz, the digital magazine, on Mr. Depardieu - “Adieu: Gerard Depardieu is leaving France to flee an enemy he can't conquer - Taxes” - reminded readers that Mr. Depardieu had acted as French conquerors and heroes, Napoleon Bonaparte, Danton, the Count of Montecristo or more recently, Obelix.

Culture and Communication Minister Aurélie Filipetti used the same metaphor in her reply to Mr. Depardieu: “We shouldn't be getting lectured on morals by those who abandon the battlefield when we need everyone to be mobilized,” she said in a phone interview with I-Tele.

National Assembly President and Socialist Claude Bartolone sai d, “Depardieu should remember one thing, that whatever his talent, he never would have become who he is without French cinema.”

While President Hollande said today that no one should be “blamed” for fleeing France because of taxes, those who stay should be praised for the “patriotism” and solidarity.

The political right was quick to use Mr. Depardieu as an example of the wages of Mr. Hollande's policies: Luc Chatel, education minister under former president Nicolas Sarkozy, tweeted: “Industrials, Investors, Artists: this government really doesn't like creators.”

Opposition party politician Jean-François Copé of the UMP said on I-Tele today that the controversy shows how “François Hollande is driving our country into the ground through a fiscal mugging.”

The right-leaning daily, Le Figaro, conducted an onli ne poll asking, “Do you understand Depardieu's anger?” Of the more than 100,000 respondents, 80 percent said they did.

Some papers took a more objective approach: Les Echos published a piece explaining “why did Depardieu pay 85 percent in taxes?”

“With the 15% remaining, Depardieu can still build a second 8000 square feet villa…” tweeted Le Monde journalist Samuel Laurent ironically. (Mr. Depardieu just start building a second villa in the village of Trouville in Normandy.)

Since the news of his departure, #Depardieu has been one of the trending subjects on Twitter. To the point that French twitter user Anne Jocteur Monrozier wrote: “Seriously, is all we are going to hear about this week Depardieu and the world ending?”

On one of his visits to France, Will Smith, the American actor, was asked on French television about paying taxes. “I have no issue with paying taxes and whatever needs to be done for my country to grow,” he said.

But his stunned response when told of Mr. Hollande's proposed millionaires tax?

“75?! Yeah, that's different. That's different. Yeah, 75. Well, you know, God bless America!”