The French government is moving to amend tax laws that would impose lavies on crypto wealth over 2 million euros ($2.3 million), as it considers decentralized digital assets to be unproductive wealth.
They claim the purpose is to encourage investments in more productive assets, but it's rather hard to believe that when the approach to encourage investments isn't creating an incentive, but instead, disincentivizing investment in supposed unproductive assets.
This makes the tax laws more of an attack on the people's earned wealth, than an encouragement to invest in the broader economy.
Lawmakers in France have voted to advance an amendment to the country’s tax laws that would impose levies on “unproductive wealth,” including some types of property and crypto holdings.
Centrist MP Jean-Paul Matteï filed the amendment on Oct. 22, with members of the National Assembly, the country’s lower house, passing the amendment with a vote of 163-150 late on Friday, with the backing of socialist and far-right MPs.
The summary notes that “unproductive goods” would no longer be exempt under the law, and taxable assets have been expanded to include “non-productive” real estate, property such as “precious objects” and planes, and as well as “digital assets.”
Only those with “unproductive wealth” exceeding 2 million euros ($2.3 million) will be taxed, rising from the threshold of 1.3 million ($1.5 million) under current laws.
The tax rate is also changed, charging a flat rate of 1% on the taxable assets over the 2 million euro threshold. – Cointelegraph report
I often say, tax is exploitation and many share this opinion. That said, in the traditional sense of meaning, most people think that tax is simply a means to fund the government, for the good of the nation, all of that, but what tax really is, is a tool to control the population.
In the case above, tax on "unproductive wealth" aims to force people to not invest in digital assets, effectively controlling where they put their money.
What might be easy to miss is that these unproductive asset taxes aren't like regular taxes, it's more of a continuous wealth charge till an individual's wealth in digital assets falls below the threshold.
When you're worth maybe over $20 million in unproductive assets such as crypto or digital assets, you get taxed annually until your wealth falls below $2.3 million.
This is evidently aimed at control how rich and powerful people can get outside the traditional monetary system.
This punishes individual's attempt to shield their wealth from the broken fiat system.