French footballers strike over super tax

REPRESENTATIVES from French football clubs have been unsuccessful in their bid to get the French president to back down on plans to impose a super-tax on players’ salaries. Francois Hollande told football club owners on Thursday that he has no intention of repealing or exempting them from a 75-percent tax on salaries exceeding one million euros ($1.38 million) per year, despite the threat of a match blackout later this month.

“The need to clean up public finances fully justifies this effort demanded of businesses that choose to pay such high annual salaries,” Hollande said in a statement after meeting club executives.

After the meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris, the head of the French Soccer Federation, Noel Le Graet, said Hollande was “inflexible” to their demands.

“He said that since the text was voted upon, it could not be rearranged. But he has listened to us and that is very important. We never know what the future holds but tonight he was firm and decided to apply the tax” Le Graet said.

The move has prompted the country’s professional football clubs to postpone matches between 29 November and 2 December in protest.

The last time games were boycotted in the French league was in 1972, but that was at the initiative of the players.
Hollande’s determination to stick to the two-year supertax contrasted with his government’s backpedalling on other fiscal fronts, like a proposed tax on trucks that was suspended this week following protests by farmers and truckers in Brittany.

The proposed “eco-tax” meant to raise up to 1 billion euros ($1.38 billion) a year for rail projects will be suspended until the government has fine-tuned its application, Budget Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told BFMTV.

Pressure on France from European partners to reduce its public deficit have led to tax rises in the 2014 budget and fuelled rising discontent, with a poll showing Hollande with the lowest approval rating of any president on record.

The Socialist government has also backed down on a proposed tax on savings, reinstated a tax break on education costs and dropped a planned new tax on business turnover, each after protests by interest groups.-News24.