- Ineffective spending
- Lower taxes on wealth (i.e. non-income)
- Higher taxes on consumption
- Higher taxes in Europe on employers (i.e. non-personal income)
- Higher taxes on capital income
Do people have good resources to understand the relative source of discrepancy?
If the city did find the money, you would then see people opposing transit on the grounds of environmental impact, or noise, or crime, or the "character of the neighborhood". Then the lawsuits would start.
Use this simulator : https://entreprise.pole-emploi.fr/cout-salarie/ and you'll see that for a 100 kEuro/year employee, what the employee sees is 55 kEuro/year (and that's before income tax). My point is that most taxation in France is not income tax, so even if a marginal rate of 45% exists, that's not where the French are most taxed (although the French would argue that "cotisation sociales" are not taxes, IMHO they very much are). Income tax is not even the number 1 tax for the French state (that would be VAT, see https://www.performance-publique.budget.gouv.fr/budget-compt...).
Not saying this is a bad thing (I wouldn't mind a top marginal rate of 90 % as has existed in the US for most of the 20th century... most people aren't subject to it), and in fact I think the French get a lot (although not enough, the state budget could be better managed) for all their taxes.