Bernard Arnault has waded into an ongoing debate on how to restore France’s finances, calling an economist who has advocated a wealth tax a far-left activist whose ideology will destroy the country’s economy.
The ideas of Gabriel Zucman, an economist who’s been generating headlines for his defense of a levy of 2% on fortunes above €100 million ($117 million), risk destroying the French economy, the billionaire founder and chief executive officer of luxury conglomerate LVMH told the Sunday Times.
Zucman is “first and foremost a far-left activist,” Arnault told the newspaper. “He uses his pseudo-academic expertise — which itself is the subject of widespread debate — to serve his ideology (which aims to destroy the liberal economy, the only one that works for the good of all.)”
“How could he directly involve me when I am certainly the largest individual taxpayer and one of the largest professional taxpayers through the companies I run?” added Arnault, whose fortune is estimated at $169 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index — making him Europe’s wealthiest person.
His comments come as France struggles to pass a budget and rein in its deficit amid a divided Parliament, which lacks a party with an absolute majority. Socialist lawmakers, who have a pivotal role in a hung parliament, are leading the charge on introducing a wealth levy that they say would raise €15 billion a year.
Zucman has estimated around 1,800 households in France would be concerned by this levy.
“French billionaires don’t pay or pay very little income tax,” he told France 2 television earlier this month, adding that they earn dividends which are funneled through holding companies that aren’t subject to taxes.
The economist on Saturday described Arnault’s attack against him as a caricature and denied he had been an activist in any movement or party, highlighting his career instead as a professor at universities including Berkeley.
“This rhetoric, not so far from Trump’s or Musk’s, should worry us,” Zucman said in a post on social media platform X, which is owned by Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest person.
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