As Hollande Turns Up the Taxes, Wealthy French Vote With Their Feet. Bob Bauman (

François Gérard Georges Nicolas Hollande was elected president of France on May 6, 2012, defeating Nicolas Sarkozy. Only the second Socialist president of the Fifth French Republic, (after François Mitterrand, 1981-1995), he wasted no time in targeting “rich people” whom he publicly has said he “dislikes.”
Not exactly a poor man, Hollande owns three holiday homes on the Riviera in Cannes worth US$1.3 million and shares a spacious Paris apartment with his lover, Valerie Trierweiler.
Echoing candidate Obama’s refrain that the rich must be made to pay their “fair share,” Hollande and his Socialist parliamentary majority added new surcharges to France’s 30-year-old existing wealth taxes.
French households and individuals with a net worth over US$1.7 million will be hit with a new higher tax rate of 75% on all earnings over €1 million (US$1.24 million). That gives France Europe’s highest income tax rate, topping Sweden’s 57%.