Boiling (Mad) Frogs ~ French High-Tax Exodus...

The FT's Hugh Carnegy and Scheherazade Daneshkhu write that Entrepreneurs follow Depardieu out of France...

"Jean-Gil Boitouzet’s departure may not cause the same hullabaloo as the tax exile of Gérard Depardieu but, like the film star, the businessman is quitting France for Belgium. [The] founder of the online brokerage Bourse Direct [...] will move across the border before January 1, when President François Hollande’s new tax regime -- including a 75 per cent marginal rate of income tax -- takes effect. He says tax is not the main reason he is relocating to Belgium, but rather the anti-business culture in France. “It is like boiling the frog. But I am jumping out of the water before it boils.” A “morose” national mood and high taxes add up to a hostile “ambience”, he says. “This is a country where there is no growth, the cost of labour is very high, and when entrepreneurs succeed they are criticised for exploiting their workers.” Just how many people are treading a similar path to Mr Boitouzet and Mr Depardieu -- to less harsh tax regimes [...] -- is impossible to gauge: the two men are unusual in being open about their plans."