Not really in this case. The effect is that nobody buys cars that would hit a siginficant malus
Thereby removing people’s choice in how to spend their resources and reducing their quality of life. And for those who refuse to give up their choice there is a payment to those in power, which transfers some of their hard earned quality of life to the recipients. There is one group that sees a benefit and everybody else loses.
@Silvaire it is the larger group that reaps the benefits. People are entitled to spend their money however they wish in France.
However in order to benefit on some of the things we have become accustomed to, we pay higher taxes if we are wealthy. It is the reason there are not a vast number of euro billionaires in France.
On the other hand the vast majority of us are happy. We have good food, good wine, and a good social and family life.
We don’t want to work long hours and forever.
I would however be interested to see a comparison between the total purchase cost of a new Ferrari or Bentley on the road in France compared.to the same car in the USA and UK, all taxes included.
Silvaire wrote:
Thereby removing people’s choice in how to spend their resources and reducing their quality of life.
Correct. And those who can’t really afford to change cars every few years loose theirs to unwarranted requirements to keep them going. My car was nothing like a luxury car, even when I bought it, but a normal family limousine. If running a car like this for 23 years is not ecological in the sense that no material got wasted, then I don’t know what is. It ran a pretty neat MPG too for a 3 L engine.
Clearly with the Hybrid I have now my road tax is going down and also my insurance I found out even with full CDW cover. Clearly I will use less fuel. But I also have to pay for months money which I don’t actually have. Pricing out old cars with this kind of tactics means to take away the capability of people owning cars and forcing them into leasing and credit agreements most don’t want.
gallois wrote:
It is the reason there are not a vast number of euro billionaires in France.
No, because most of them have either gone to Monaco or other places which don’t grab money like France does. I even remember one of your more prominent actors becoming a citizen of Russia not too long ago. But even for smaller incomes, the taxes I am hearing of my friends who live there are mindblowing for someone who has never paid more than 10% tax in his life.
Yes that well known actor did become a Russian citizen. He claimed it was for tax reasons, but most believe it had more to do with a new to escape sexual abuse charges, which in itself is strange in that several prominent American film personnel have used France as their place of escape to avoid similar charges.
Compared to Switzerland our taxes are very high, no doubt about that.
It is very difficult to say how we compare with other countries for two reasons.
1/ As a French citizen you declare worldwide revenue on your tax form. And different taxes attract different rates in other countries. Eg.local taxes, sales taxes, tax on interest, property and dividends.
2/ The tax system across the board is complicated and does include many reductions for family, health insurance, travel, training and retraining.
Personally I don’t complain as the highest percentage of the tax I pay in any year is to the UK HMRC on investments I have there for no benefit. The tax I pay in France brings me many benefits that make my quality of life here very enjoyable in my troisième age.
gallois wrote:
The tax I pay in France brings me many benefits that make my quality of life here very enjoyable in my troisième age.
I agree, even though I’m in the population bracket that basically pays for everyone else (employed, no family incentives, no youth or senior advantages). It’s hard to quantify, but even in Paris (the most expensive city in France) you probably get a similar lifestyle with a €60k salary than what you would get with a $150k salary in San Francisco / NYC. Accounting for housing, health coverage, school, child nursery etc. sheds a really different light towards salary / tax rate difference.
As for cars, you’d be surprised how much more an IC vehicle pollutes after manufacturing, so in theory it’s a good idea to have these incentives. The only thing making me sad is that our old banned cars end up in the Middle East and in Africa where they end up polluting anyway, so it’s still really a lose-lose for us. Like in many domains, our moral principles make us pay more than other parts of the world that don’t have these principles, and eventually make us poorer. Sometimes a little realpolitik and a little emphasis on our own prosperity / independence would be welcome.
I wonder how many people realise that if you are in the productive part of the population more than 2/rd3 of what you earn gets taxed away even if you have just an average salary. France taxes away close to half what its residents produce and spend even more, a lot of that is then redistributed to those who are somehow more deserving of other people’s money. Other European countries are not far behind.
I wonder how many people realise that if you are in the productive part of the population more than 2/rd3 of what you earn gets taxed away even if you have just an average salary.
Not enough, apparently.
What actually matters if you want to do anything independently useful or enjoyable with your life is how much of your annual net earnings are available after you pay the bills to survive, in absolute terms and not as a percentage. Then if that’s enough and if you do something productive with it for a while, you end up being able to do something every year other than sit around and drink cheap wine. Nobody and no system will ever provide anything for you unless it is very modest in scope and very much in the mainstream, otherwise you have to do it for yourself.
It’s also important that some of the money you do spend to simply survive goes into tangible assets that you can later sell – housing being the prime example because earning the money to buy a million $ house, then later selling it and moving to a $700K house in a cheaper area is a better way to fund a Marchetti purchase than earning less to buy an equally nice $300K house in a low income area, then selling it and renting. Or renting your whole life, which is self-imposed slavery 
All of the above underscores why earning high net income matters, why wasting it on highly taxed cars and other depreciating non-assets is a bad idea unless you’re already done otherwise, and why setting your life up in a way that provides little discretionary income while also delegating your survival to others is a bad idea. If you have to move to bring those factors into line, I’d recommend it, and the younger the better. Educating the brainwashed young who have yet to realize anything beyond survival is possible to them is also important, even as the brainwashing by those taking their productive income and economic opportunity continues.
What an insult @Silvaire “sitting around drinking cheap wine”
I’ll have you know I sit around and drink very good wine. Whether that is cheap or expensive does not enter the equation. It has to taste good. The same goes for the food I eat. The flying I do. The plane I fly.
The money I have available to spend allows my wife and I to do what we want to do. What interests us. The fact that the tax I paid and the income I have left to spend have allowed me to retire before I was 60years old and getting too old or infirm to allow me to enjoy them.
Even whilst working and despite the tax I was paying I still had enough to spend on an enjoyable standard of living.
I don’t begrudge others less fortunate getting government help or paying for children’s education, despite having none of my own, or paying more into a health system than I have had back over the years.(fortunately I have been lucky with my health for the most part.)
So if the French government takes a higher level of overall tax than other countries, as long as it does it fairly and the money it receives in taxes is spent well. So be it. I want for nothing.
If the populations of other countries pay lower taxes and have a lot more to spend and enjoy life. Well good for them. After all we all seek a good quality of life for ourselves and our families don’t we?
Silvaire wrote:
Then if that’s enough and if you do something productive with it for a while, you end up being able to do something every year other than sit around and drink cheap wine. Nobody and no system will ever provide anything for you unless it is very modest in scope and very much in the mainstream, otherwise you have to do it for yourself.
Maybe France may well be the exception to that rule and they do know their wines… But seriously, maybe France is the only working socialist state where people actually do live quite a good life despite the insane taxation. As gallois sais correctly, French people have very early retirement ages (some professions in their early 50ties) where many then take another job on top of their pensions and make really good income, as the pensions (correct me if I am wrong) are not taxed or taxed lower. France always has had a rather high standard of living which is puzzling to anyone coming from somewhere people struggle to make ends meet with much less taxation.
I reckon the question in such countries is what do you get back. If you pay insane taxes but instead you get to retire early, get state paid medical care and other stuff which takes a lot of the untaxed profit in other countries, it may well work for a lot of people. Otherwise the French would long have changed the system. Somehow they appear to have found a balance between taxation and people being able to keep a relatively high standard of living, something which other countries have failed to do.
Something which I regularly fail to take into account is that the net tax rate of xx% of income does not say too much of how much is left of your salary once taxes are paid. In Switzerland, true, we have very few taxes (around 10% in most places) but we shell out insane amounts for health insurance for instance, which i understand is included in France for instance. If a “high” tax includes most of what others in “low” tax countries have to pay on top of taxes, health insurance, pension funds, unemployment insurance only to name a few, then the comparisons are lacking severely.
Cobalt wrote:
I wonder how many people realise that if you are in the productive part of the population more than 2/rd3 of what you earn gets taxed away even if you have just an average salary.
I do, and I approve.
In fact, I and my wife both being in the top 10% earning bracket in our country, we’ve seen our taxes drop for at least 20 years giving us back money we don’t really need while important societal functions like schools, health care and law enforcement have been facing a chronic and worsening lack of resources.
(The lowered tax rates are certainly not the only reasons for this, but it is a major reason.)
Well, it is nice to be able to buy an (almost) new EV and to face a 10% inflation rate and a quadrupling of the interest on my house mortgage with a yawn. Those are luxuries that certainly not everyone enjoy. i just hope schools get fixed before I have grandchildren of that age and that health care gets fixed before I get old enough to need regular care.
