French analyses of estate taxation often looks at the ISF wealth tax and nothing else. The initial idea of the lawmakers behind the ISF - implemented in 1981- was firstly to impose a levy on goods providing their owners with the wherewithal to pay more in tax, secondly to create a redistribution...

In a kind of double paradox, the French government started a major reform of the country's capital taxes during the final year of the current legislature, concurrently with its dismantling of the “fiscal shield” that symbolised the 2007 TEPA Work, Employment and Purchasing Power law (Loi...