Some of France's richest people, including the billionaire heiress of L'Oreal and the head of oil major Total, urged the government to tax them more to help solve the country's financial problems.
In a petition published on the website of weekly magazine Le Nouvel Observateur today, 16 company executives, business leaders and super-rich individuals called for the creation of a 'special contribution' that would target wealth without forcing the rich to quit France for overseas tax havens.
The petition, whose signatories included L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt and Total chief Christophe de Margerie, follows a call by US billionaire Warren Buffett for US authorities to raise taxes on himself and other ultra-high earners to contribute to austerity efforts.
In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy is already planning to axe some tax exemptions that benefit the wealthy as he seeks some €5-10 billion in extra revenue in the 2012 budget following a market rout that has highlighted concern over French public finances.
Budget Minister Valerie Pecresse said this month the government was working on a new contribution from taxpayers earning over €1m a year.
'We are conscious of having benefited from a French system and a European environment that we are attached to and which we hope to help maintain,' the petition said.
It was signed by chief executives including Maurice Levy of advertising company Publicis Group, Frederic Oudea of bank Société Générale and Jean-Cyril Spinetta, president of Air France KLM.
Sarkozy had initially planned to raise an extra €3 billion next year by clamping down on tax breaks as he seeks to trim the 2012 deficit to 4.6% of gross domestic product from a forecast 5.7% this year.
But weak second-quarter economic growth, together with Standard & Poor's downgrade this month of its credit rating for the US, have convinced Paris it needs to act more urgently to shore up its AAA rating, crucial for the stability of the euro zone as it wrestles with its debt crisis.
