![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/ec77.jpg\")
Reuters<\/p>\n
The tax, which would target wealth above 100 million euros ($117 million), has gained political traction in France, where Prime Minister S\u00e9bastien Lecornu faces pressure from the Socialist Party to include it in the 2026 budget or face a confidence vote that could topple his government.<\/p>\n
“This is clearly not a technical or economic debate, but rather a clearly stated desire to destroy the French economy,” Arnault told Britain’s Sunday Times.<\/p>\n
He accused the plan’s architect, economist Gabriel Zucman of being “first and foremost a far-left activist” who uses “pseudo-academic competence” to promote an ideology aimed at dismantling the liberal economic system, which Arnault described as “the only one that works for the good of all”.<\/p>\n
Zucman, a professor at France\u2019s \u00c9cole Normale Sup\u00e9rieure and the University of California, Berkeley, rejected the accusations.<\/p>\n
“I’ve never been an activist for any movement or party,” he said on X, adding his work was grounded in research, not ideology.<\/p>\n
Zucman was among 300 economists who publicly backed the economic platform of the left-wing Nouveau Front Populaire alliance ahead of last year’s legislative elections.<\/p>\n
He has recently argued in media appearances that the ultra-rich pay proportionally less tax than many other citizens \u2014 a gap the proposed levy aims to close.<\/p>\n
The tax has broad public support, with an Ifop poll commissioned by the Socialist Party this month showing 86% approval.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u00a9 Thomson Reuters 2025 All rights reserved.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Reuters Published September 21, 2025 Bernard Arnault, the boss of luxury goods group LVMH and France’s richest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[712,58775,709,59,57,58,711,58740,710,50,713,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-151877","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-beauty","9":"tag-bernard-arnault","10":"tag-fashion","11":"tag-gb","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-greatbritain","14":"tag-luxury","15":"tag-lvmh","16":"tag-network","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-professionals","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom","21":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}