Often during tax season, we look at what the government has skimmed off our paychecks and wonder whether the state is really taking more from us than it’s giving. But Americans could learn a few things about citizenship from the French.
Last year, the French prime minister used the word “pathetic” to describe the decision of Gerard Depardieu, a well-known actor and filmmaker, to move to Belgium to escape President Francois Hollande’s proposed super-tax on incomes more than one million euros. The prime minister’s comment sparked a national discussion on the responsibility the citizen has to his or her state. Passionate arguments abounded on both sides.
“Nobody is indispensable,” said Yann Galut, a socialist member of Parliament, in an interview with the New Yorker. “Depardieu has benefited from France — without France, he wouldn’t exist.”
It was a uniquely democratic notion she was uttering, that of replaceability.
On the other side, a group of French entrepenuers, called Les Pigeons — slang in French meaning “fall guys” — voiced their disapproval of Hollande’s action, calling it “anti-capitalist, anti-economic dogma … the breaking of dreams, the quasi-sadistic demotivation.”
Regardless of what argument represents the majority of opinion in France, the liveliness of the debate was admirable. Even though a 2012 Pew Center poll found 58 percent of Americans think the rich pay too little in taxes, we don’t tend to raise a national fuss about rich people who use loopholes and lawyers to avoid taxation. It’s third-rail politics.
Last week at a Hinckley forum on money and politics, Jeffrey Winters, a professor of political economy at Yale University, explained how the rich buy accountant-prepared “tax letters,” which exempt them from certain taxes. At a cost of a few million dollars, the letters are a bargain — given that they exempt rich citizens from $20-30 million in taxes.
The French newspapers and airwaves hum with debate about such practices. But Americans are vaguely impressed by such cleverness at beating the system. Besides, what did the government ever give us?
Well, let’s start with our own campus. In 2010, according to UNews, $451 million in stimulus money funded a 44,000-square-foot addition to the Henry Eyring Building, the Utah Education Network and 206 university research projects. If these facilities and projects contribute to the individual success of those who work and learn from them, it is true without our fellow taxpayers, we wouldn’t exist the way we do.
In France, the Depardieu story took on a popular character as people weighed in on the tax evasion debate on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
But it also kept popping up in the mainstream press, like the business newspaper La Tribune. In the United States, we are reluctant to pass judgment on what another citizen does with his hard-earned money. The French conversation recognizes that how that money is taxed affects the whole country.
French citizens have a greater awareness of how a person’s responsibility to other citizens curbs his individual freedom. For instance, the 1972 construction of Gan Tower, a skyscraper in Paris, was beset by a protest movement, which took issue with the tower’s height and visibility from other points in the city.
Citizens who assert their opinion in public conversation are not guaranteed success: Depardieu is free to move to Belgium — the Gan Tower was constructed as planned. But by speaking up, French citizens protect something more valuable than the city skyline: social democracy. Tax evasion presents a lesser threat to American democracy than a depoliticized public.