The world knows about the misbegotten fuel tax that has triggered the riots for which Paris is again preparing on Saturday. But the political wonder is that President Emmanuel Macron would think the French needed another increase in a country that is already the most heavily taxed in the developed world. This is a deeper cause of the political crisis engulfing Mr. Macron.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released its annual Revenue Statistics report this week, and France topped the charts, with a tax take equal to 46.2% of GDP in 2017. That’s more than Denmark (46%), Sweden (44%) and Germany (37.5%), and far more than the OECD average (34.2%) or the U.S. (27.1%, which includes all levels of government).

France doesn’t collect that revenue in the ways you might think. Despite the stereotype of heavy European income taxes on the rich, Paris relies disproportionately on social-insurance, payroll and property taxes. Social taxes account for 37% of French revenue; the OECD average is 26%. Payroll and property taxes contribute 3% and 9%, compared to the OECD averages of 1% and 6%.

This is another reminder that rapacious states can’t support themselves solely with progressive income taxes. The rich aren’t rich enough to fund the modern welfare state’s ambitions, and their labor and wealth are too mobile to pin down in high-tax jurisdictions. The real money is in the middle class, whose labor income is far easier to tax, especially if the tax is disguised as a social “contribution.”

Then Europe adds a regressive consumption tax, the value-added tax. In France, VAT and other consumption taxes make up 24% of revenue, and that’s on the low side compared to an OECD average of 33%. Consumption taxes often fall hardest on the poor and middle class, who devote a greater proportion of their income to consumption.


These revenue raids on the middle class help to explain the furor over Mr. Macron’s fuel-tax self-destruction. Increases in charges on gasoline and diesel clobber the same rural and exurban French who already pay in so many other ways. Mr. Macron never campaigned on raising the fuel tax, but he imposed it anyway in the name of fighting climate change and it could scupper his entire reform agenda, and perhaps his Presidency.

One of Mr. Macron’s campaign promises was to make France great again by reviving the economy, but the political left is now taking advantage of the fuel tax to reverse the few gains he has made. Mr. Macron may now cave by re-imposing a wealth tax he killed last year. The tax helps drive productive French out of the country, though it raised only some €5 billion a year, compared to the €372 billion Paris raised via social taxes in 2016.

Mr. Macron also promised to shrink the civil service and rationalize some welfare benefits to allow Paris to tax less. The economic disaster for France is that, after his fuel-tax bungle, it will be all but impossible for him to fulfill any of those necessary reforms.