Would Tracey Emin be better off as a tax exile in France?

Would Tracey Emin be better off as a tax exile in France?

Tracey Emin is considering packing up her pencils and any unmade beds and moving to France, chiefly because she doesn't want to pay the new top rate of tax. From April, high earners will pay 50p in the pound on annual income over £150,000. According to tax experts, she would also be paying 8% national insurance (NI) up to £43,000 and another 1% after that. Emin is comfortably within the top bracket. One of her neon works sold last year for $220,000 at Sothebys in New York.

But would she actually be any better off in France? Clive Fathers, a tax partner at Grant Thornton, reckons she would. On the face of it, the French regime is not especially generous: the top rate of income tax in France is lower, at 40% on amounts over €69,505, but she would be likely to pay between 12% and 25% in social security, the equivalent of NI. France also applies an annual wealth tax to individuals whose assets exceed €790,000, of between 0.55% and 1.8%, but that doesn't kick in until you have lived there for about five years.

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The real benefit might depend on how she pays herself. If she sets up a company to pay royalties, she would benefit from a lower effective rate in France. If she receives dividends, she would pay just 25% in France and up to 42.5% in Britain. It frankly all gets rather complicated. So before you go searching down the back of the settee for your passport Tracey, consult an expert.

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