One step forward, one step back...

From The Independent:

Emmanuel Macron’s administration will propose a tax on luxury yachts, supercars and precious metals in France’s 2018 budget.

Lawmakers will propose amendments after critics attacked the President’s move to scrap the wealth tax in France. Mr Macron abolished the tax, which has been seen as a symbol of social justice for the left but blamed by others for driving thousands of millionaires abroad.

The wealth tax, introduced by the Socialists in the 1980s, was levied on individuals with assets above 1.3 million euros (£1.2 million). Initial plans were to replace it with a real estate tax but yachts, luxury cars and jewellery were supposed to escape.

"The idea of the wealth tax reform was that there should not be a brake on contributors to economic production, that we suppress taxes that deter investors," Richard Ferrand, leader of the Republic on the Move parliamentary group, told Ouest France. "Taxing real estate wealth is compatible with this, but goods such as yachts, luxury cars or precious metals do not contribute to the productive economy either."

Unusually for me, I praised Macron for replacing the general wealth tax with a land value tax; what the idiots have now done is reverse that for a complete non-reason: "goods such as yachts, luxury cars or precious metals do not contribute to the productive economy". Those things are very much part of the productive economy. People produce them, needs are satisfied, people get paid wages etc. There is no fundamental qualitative difference between inflatable dinghies and super-luxury yachts.

They also miss the point. Even if the idea is just want to "squeeze the rich", you can raise far more from a straight land value tax than from a general wealth tax because you can apply a high rate to land (which makes up the bulk of 'wealth' anyway) and collect it all (land is immobile). If you treat all 'wealth' equally and thus apply the same rate to all of it, then the revenue maximising rate has to be very low because it is too easy to evade/under declare/hide all the non-land 'wealth', or simply move abroad and take your non-land 'wealth' with you, as many have done. 3% of £80 is more than 0.5% of £100, if you see what I mean

There is no justification for a general wealth tax anyway, of course, but sod principles, it's about 'what works'. If something doesn't 'work', it's a clue that it was a bad idea.

I suppose this could be a clever move by the French Home-Owner-Ist fifth column to minimise the tax rate on their land by equating it with manufactured goods? Who knows?