Zucman Tax: Bernard Arnault Accuses the Economist of Being a “Far-Left Activist”

The Zucman tax's opponents gained a powerful ally on Saturday, September 20. In an op-ed for the British media outlet Sunday Times on September 20, Bernard Arnault, the wealthy head of LVMH, attacked economist Gabriel Zucman and the plan to tax assets over €100 million at a 2% rate, which bears his name.

"We cannot understand Mr. Zucman's positions if we forget that he is first and foremost a far-left activist. As such, he puts at the service of his ideology (which aims at the destruction of the liberal economy, the only one that works for the good of all) a pseudo-academic competence which, itself, is widely debated," declares the former richest man in the world.

Bernard Arnault thus joins the already large ranks of bosses and politicians who have targeted the economist . Nicolas Dufourq, head of BpiFrance, had thus assured that such a tax was "a pure story of French jealousy, a hatred of the rich, who are supposedly the new noble." And to half-heartedly accuse Gabriel Zucman of incompetence. "It's crazy, it's communist in reality, how can we still come out with enormities like that in France!?" he added.

Far removed from what the ultra-rich's lamentations depict , the levy—which was adopted by the National Assembly and is awaiting debate in the Senate—is far from confiscatory. It only affected 1,800 families out of the entire French population. Bernard Arnault, who assured a Senate hearing that he had paid €15 billion in corporate taxes over 10 years, does not see it that way. According to him, the Zucman tax is "a clearly formulated desire to bring down the French economy."