France Plots Radical Tax on Super-Rich to Rearm – and Britain Could Be Next
18th March 2025
Immediately followed by all the French ‘super-rich’ moving elsewhere.
Europe is desperately scrambling for ways to fund greater defence spending as Donald Trump brings the era of US military dominance on the Continent to an acrimonious end.
Estonia has stripped its pensioners of valuable tax reliefs and imposed a 2pc “defence tax” on all its citizens – but France has floated perhaps the most radical solution yet.
Finance minister, Eric Lombard, last week opened the door to taxing just the country’s super-rich to fund France’s military build-up.
France is facing a unique quandary – it plans to boost its defence budget by €3bn (£2.5bn) a year until 2030 while managing an eye-watering national debt of €3.3 trillion.