Report: French Taxes and Regulations Have Killed One Million Jobs

Entrepreneurs fled and took their businesses with them

France's repressive tax regime has sent entrepreneurs fleeing abroad and lost the country up to a million jobs, a damning new report has revealed.

Tax hikes and employment regulations imposed by left and right wing governments over 20 years meant there were now 60,000 French businessmen abroad employing around 16 people each.

The figures were released amid a flood of wealthy French quitting France this year to avoid a looming socialist tax of 75 per cent on all earnings over one million euros - about £850,000.

Film star Gerard Depardieu, the Mulliez family who own the Auchan supermarket chain, electronic music icon Jean-Michel Jarre and France's richest man Bernard Arnault have all quit France in the past six months.

Now research by the think-tank Concorde has found that three percent of the two million French living abroad now own companies and if they had not left there would one million more people in work in France.