French President Wants 75% Tax Rate on Rich

French President Francois Hollande’s promise to slap a 75 percent tax on those making more than $1.24 million a year is making many wealthy citizens consider leaving their homeland. Paris attorney Vincent Grandil has been telling clients to wait and see, The New York Times reported.

“We’re getting a lot of calls from high earners who are asking whether they should get out of France,” Grandil, a partner at Altexis, which specializes in tax matters for corporations and the wealthy, told the Times. “Even young, dynamic people pulling in 200,000 euros are wondering whether to remain in a country where making money is not considered a good thing.”

Hollande is the country’s first Socialist president since François Mitterrand in the 1980s. He is pushing for the wealthy to pay more to shore up France’s finances. Parliament plans to take up the 75 percent proposal in September. The tax would affect just 7,000 to 30,000 in a country of 65 million.

Companies are looking to move high-paid executives to countries such as Britain, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United States.

“French people have an uncomfortable relationship with money,” Grandil told the Times. “Here, someone who is a self-made man, creating jobs, and ending up as a millionaire, is viewed with suspicion. This is big cultural difference between France and the United States.”