AT FIRST it was merely a bad idea. A year ago, when François Hollande promised to tax incomes over €1m ($1.3m) at 75%, even his campaign team was surprised. “Cuba without the sun!” declared a startled Emmanuel Macron, now Mr Hollande’s economic adviser in the Elysée. Nowhere else in Europe comes close to such a rate, with even Sweden going up only to 57% (see chart). But politically it did the trick: Mr Hollande declared war on the rich, kept a communist rival at bay—and went on to win the presidency.

Yet the 75% tax has since mutated into self-torture for Mr Hollande. Although it was never likely to affect many, nor raise much revenue, nor even penalise the rich as much as other taxes, it had huge symbolism. Abroad, it labelled the Socialist government as anti-business. At home, it prompted talk of fiscal exile, and even some departures, including of the actor Gérard Depardieu. Then in December France’s constitutional council ruled the 75% rate unconstitutional; and in March the highest legal authority said that no individual tax should exceed 66.6%.

Caught between political betrayal and economic folly, Mr Hollande has chosen the second. On March 28th he announced that the 75% tax would still go ahead for incomes over €1m, but it would now be paid by firms rather than their employees. Yet this solution raises more questions than it answers. What about the self-employed, including French lawyers, film and sports stars? They will be let off, said the government, as if their high incomes are somehow more socially acceptable. So will football clubs, declared Noël Le Graët, head of the French Football Federation, claiming he had an official guarantee. Not so, retorted the government, insisting that clubs would indeed have to pay the millionaires’ tax on behalf of their players.

This messy compromise will satisfy nobody and be full of loopholes. In an exquisite twist, one of its most vehement critics is now Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the left-wing firebrand whose rise in the 2012 opinion polls prompted Mr Hollande to dream up the tax in the first place. It was an “absurd” tax, he said on French radio. “A tax is not supposed to punish, it is supposed to share; it is not about humiliating those who have money.” It would be hard to put it better.