Back in 2012, France’s President Hollande made good on a campaign promise and imposed a 75% tax on millionaires. There were some high-profile rich Frenchmen who exited the country, including Bernard Arnault, the chief executive of luxury group LVMH, who applied for Belgian nationality, and the actor Gérard Depardieu, who also moved across the border to Belgium before obtaining Russian citizenship.
Predictably, the tax took in far less than advertised before it was dropped. But there was no mass exodus of rich people from the country. You don’t get to be rich by paying taxes; you get rich by shielding your money from the tax man.
But exiting because of terrorism is another matter. And last year, 10,000 rich people left France for greener pastures – an astonishing 3% of all the millionaires in the country.
IBT:
The report was compiled by New World Wealth, an agency that gives information on the global wealth sector. The report was based on data collected from investor visa programme statistics of each country; annual interviews with around 800 global high net worth individuals and with intermediaries like migration experts, second citizenship platforms, wealth managers and property agents; data from property registers and property sales statistics in each country; and by tracking millionaire movements in the media.
According to the report, Millionaire migration in 2015, France topped the list of countries with maximum millionaire outflows as it lost 10,000 millionaires, or 3% of its millionaire population. Among the cities that saw maximum millionaire outflow, Paris, was at the top – losing about 6% of its millionaire population or 7,000 millionaires in 2015 to the UK, the US, Canada, Australia and Israel.