The old song of new taxes

While the Barnier government will have to find new resources, let’s return to the fiscal imagination of artists.

While one of the first choices that the new French government will have to make is to find new revenues for the State – and therefore possibly increase taxes – we can see that this is a subject on which the song does not always reach the heights in terms of the quality of the writing and the breadth of the view. “Taxes are really a piece of cake, but they’re not a piece of cake.”Sim sang to us in 1973.

We can consider that he is the interpreter of all the French, who do not like taxes – on principle – and especially personal income tax, invented more than a century ago, and perpetually contested, as much as the object of the attentions of our leaders to make it more acceptable to citizens.

Here is Paul Lack in 1909, Jacqueline Joubert on the 1961 disc which gives the explanations for filling out your tax form, Doc Gynéco facing the tax authorities in 2001.

In the second episode of These songs that make the news, broadcast this weekend, you hear excerpts from:

Paul Lack, Income tax, 1909

Jacqueline Joubert, The tax return, 1961

Doc Gyneco, I don’t know how to fill out my tax form, 2001

Johnny Hallyday, Outward signs of wealth, 1983

Florent Pagny, My freedom of thought, 2003

Jean Yanne in, Eroticism, by Gérard Pirès, 1969

Robert Rocca, Taxes, 1861 (recorded 1960)

Laura Neumann and Ingrid Perruche, The Lunaisians Clique, Singles Tax, 1867 (recorded 2016)

Marty, The Tax on the Lazy, 1930

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