Wealth tax will destroy economy, says France’s richest man

The billionaire owner of luxury goods giant LVMH has warned that plans for a wealth tax in France will “destroy the economy”.

Bernard Arnault, France’s richest man, criticised proposals for a 2pc tax targeted at people with fortunes of €100m (£87m) or more and denounced the policy’s main architect as a far-Left ideologue.

“This is clearly not a technical or economic debate, but rather a clearly stated desire to destroy the French economy,” Mr Arnault told The Sunday Times.

The businessman and his family have a fortune of $157bn, according to Forbes. A 2pc tax on their collective wealth would amount to roughly $3bn.

His comments have been made as Sébastien Lecornu, the country’s fifth prime minister in two years, is under pressure from the Socialist Party to include the radical tax policy in his 2026 budget.

Opponents have warned that unless he does so, Mr Lecornu will face a confidence vote that could topple his government.

According to polling, 86pc of the French public approve of the idea amid the country’s troubling debt crisis.

But Mr Arnault claimed the wealth tax plan’s architect, the economist Gabriel Zucman, was “first and foremost a far-Left activist” who was bent on dismantling the “liberal economy”.

He also accused him of boasting only “pseudo-academic competence that itself is widely debated”.

Mr Zucman, 38, dubbed the “billionaires’ nemesis” by the French press, is a professor at the prestigious École Normale Supérieure and the Paris School of Economics.

Most recently, the academic has become a central figure in the campaign for a French wealth tax and has offered his services to the government.

He is also one of 300 economists who backed the economic platform of the Left-wing Nouveau Front Populaire alliance ahead of last year’s legislative elections and has argued vocally in the media that the ultra-rich do not pay their fair share of tax.

After Mr Lecornu became prime minister earlier this month, Mr Zucman wrote on social media: “Good evening, Mr prime minister. The time has come to tax billionaires.”

This weekend, he has also hit back at Mr Arnault’s “caricatured” remarks, which he said were “baseless”.

“Contrary to what you claim, I have never been an activist in any movement nor a member of any party,” he said, according to a translation of his comments on social media platform X.

“My sole activity is my work as a researcher and teacher. For over 17 years, my work has involved mapping the wealth of great fortunes, studying tax havens, and objectively analysing the techniques of tax evasion and optimisation used by great fortunes.