We hesitate between the western and Balzac… even Zola. The “Cash Investigation” documentary broadcast Thursday, November 16 on France 2, is very lively… Too much? This umpteenth investigation into the “ultra-rich” takes us behind the scenes of this “wonderful world”, this area “where France excels, where records are broken, where podiums are monopolized”, this “world apart, with its tailor-made rules and tax privileges”.
The film directed by Elise Menand does not skimp on clichés or staging. It starts on a racetrack, of course, where the galloping jockeys are adorned with the faces of Bernard Arnault – “followed by Elon Musk”, who ends up winning the race in the final straight (for the rank of world number one ) –, and Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, the heiress of L’Oréal, “the richest woman in the world”.
“To be rich, in France, it is better to be well born”, this is the common thread of the show. A long scroll establishes the list of great French fortunes – 122 billionaires counted in 2022 by Challenges, 60% of whom inherited a company. Elise Lucet goes to Panthéon-Sorbonne University to unroll her parchment under the eyes of Nicolas Frémeaux, lecturer and author of the book Les Nouveaux Héritiers (Seuil, 2018). “Dynasties,” said the journalist; “rentiers,” adds the professor. Balzac we told you…
Collusion of public authorities
Some sequences feature extras portraying the rich and the poor (champagne for some, popcorn for others). Here is a man named Edmond Cash (!), “at the head of a media empire” – some will recognize Bolloré, Arnault, Xavier Niel (individual shareholder of Le Monde)… –, distressed by the tax rate of 45% of his fortune. He runs out of his private hotel, with a (small) safe under his arm, to escape (tax-wise) at the wheel of his Jaguar… “Hop, hop, hop,” says the voiceover, “don’t panic, there is tax loopholes which allow the ultra-rich to drop inheritance tax dizzyingly. »
Here we are at the heart of the matter. The documentary leaves fiction to return to reality. He points out the failings, even the connivance, of the public authorities. These famous tax loopholes on business transfers which allow you to benefit from a “super-deduction of 75%”, but represent “a shortfall for the State coffers of 2 to 3 billion euros each year “. He recalls this report commissioned in 2020 by Emmanuel Macron himself from Olivier Blanchard (former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund) and Jean Tirole (Nobel in Economics 2014), which remained on the shelf failing to overturn the table . The two experts advocated “redistribution” between the very rich and the poorest.
Elise Menand went to meet Camille Landais, deputy president of the Economic Analysis Council. In the viewfinder, the “real tax rate on the inheritances of the richest”. The figure falls: 10% effective rate on the entire wealth of the richest 0.1%, “thanks to a whole bunch of exemptions”, underlines Mr. Landais, also a professor at the London School of Economics. No wonder France is the “third country with the most millionaires in the world”…
