Rich people fleeing France

Data released last week suggest that an increasing number of wealthy French citizens are leaving the country, which observers link to extremely high taxes for people at the "top of the pyramid", reports the Patria News Agency.  

In 2013, 3,744 people earning more than 100,000 euros annually left France, an increase of 40 percent compared to 2012, according to the French newspaper Les Echos, citing official tax administration data. In 2013, 658 people earning more than 300,000 euros annually also left the nation.  

The respected newspaper points out that the figures are incomplete due to various bureaucratic issues and warns that drawing conclusions is ungrateful, but the content of the article aligns with a recent report by the consulting group New World Wealth (NWW), according to which France is third on the list of countries with the largest outflow of wealthy individuals. 

NWW claims that 42,000 millionaires have left the nation between 2000 and 2014, reports France24. In 2012, French President François Hollande introduced a special tax rate of 75 percent for people earning more than one million euros annually. The tax caused great dissatisfaction and was eventually declared unconstitutional.