Liberte, Egalite--Mais Verite?

"Every Frenchman," by ancient axiom, "is willing to die for his country; but none is willing to pay for it." So passionately do the French pursue their democratic ideal of representation without taxation that cheating le Fisc, as they call the income tax bureau, has become the most pervasive and engrossing national pastime after love-making--and a far less risky one. As a result of the centuries-old duel between chronically strapped governments and perennially poor-mouthed citizens, France in theory imposes higher income taxes than almost any other Western country, and in practice collects less: a mere 14% of government revenue v. 60% in the U.S.

"Everybody is a conspirator," lamented Premier (and onetime banker) Georges Pompidou as his government launched a fact-finding program called Operation Verite (Operation Truth), whose main aim is to get Frenchmen to do what comes unnaturally--to report their earnings. Why, cried the Premier, "it is nearly impossible to know even what a government employee earns!" In 1961, the government estimates, at least 36 million of France's 46 million people paid not a single sou of income tax; by the most conservative reckoning, 50% of those who should pay taxes got off scot-free. Even more remarkable, in the midst of unparalleled upper-crust opulence, was that in all France only 1,014 citizens--barely enough to support one of Paris' ***restaurants--admitted to earning more than $12,800 a year.

Fiscal Camouflage. The injustice of the system is that hapless wage earners, whose incomes are recorded on company payrolls and are thus easily available to le Fisc, shell out two-thirds of all the income taxes collected in France. While the rich get richer, thanks to an economic boom and the native genius for fiscal camouflage, rich and poor alike must shoulder massive consumer taxes, such as the 74% levy that makes French gasoline (90-c- a gallon) Europe's most expensive.

Tax reform has seldom seemed more imperative, for the government needs urgently to be assured of ever-rising revenues for such huge undertakings as its force de frappe, including an extravagant three-year buildup for France's first H-bomb tests in the Pacific, announced last week. At the same time, the economy is threatened by a burst of inflation that has boosted incomes and prices 11% in the past year and threatens to get out of hand in the wake of the recent successful miners' strike for higher pay.

Poodles & Picassos. To put teeth in its tax-extraction campaign, the government has unleashed a horde of expert snoopers who descend unexpectedly on companies and can spot a padded payroll as unerringly as a Michelin inspector exposing a warmed-over sauce bearnaise. But experience proves that it will take far more ruthless measures to make individual Frenchmen divulge their true earnings. In 1947, when Robert Schuman was Finance Minister, the government did its best by introducing the theory of "external signs of wealth," a wondrously complex Latin formula whereby tax inspectors gauged a man's richesse by counting and grading his servants, cars, yachts, dogs (purebred or mongrel?) and declarable mistresses.

As a result, wealthy Parisians let the paint peel from their houses, put, their Picassos in the attic, and claimed that their pedigreed poodles were used exclusively as watchdogs, which are taxexempt. (Le Fisc finally abandoned its hit-and-mistress methods this year.) When the inspectors started demanding taxpayers' financial records, artful Frenchmen from plumbers to landlords retaliated by insisting on cash for their services; the most fashionable doctor in Paris today would sooner vote for socialized medicine than accept a patient's check.

The government's biggest problem is that honesty, as French taxpayers see it, is not merely irrelevant but almost certainly disastrous as well. A high-minded young Parisian artist once filed a scrupulously accurate tax return and was horrified to find that the skeptical local inspector, applying the standard correction factor, credited him with three times the income he reported.

This week the government presented an ambitious program of social and economic reform to the National Assembly, and the perennial question of how to pay for it once again came to the fore. Of course, De Gaulle could always imitate the Anglo-Saxons and send tax evaders to jail. But then how would he raise the revenue to build all those new prisons?

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