PARIS -(Dow Jones)- The French business community Thursday criticized plans by President Nicolas Sarkozy's government to introduce a new tax on investment income to fund a jobseeker scheme.
"You can't just increase taxes - or add new ones - every time you need to fulfill a new objective," the leader of French business lobby Medef, Laurence Parisot, said in a radio interview. "If we add up everything that has been decided by the government in recent times, there's ground to get worried."
Sarkozy is expected to announce later in the day a new 1% tax on income from real-estate and financial investments, such as dividends and gains from life insurance contracts.
The tax proceeds will help fund a jobseeker scheme called Active Solidarity Income that is designed to make it financially more attractive to individuals to take jobs that pay less than the unemployment benefits they have been receiving. It's expected to cost about EUR8.5 billion in a full year, of which the government has already earmarked some EUR7 billion.
