“The people of France have regarded it as a badge of honour since time immemorial to find imaginative ways to avoid paying taxes,” says a banking analyst from BNP Paribas.
It is standard practice, for example, for people to pay out hundreds of thousands of francs in cash when they’re buying a house simply in order to avoid stamp duty. This phenomenon, officials at the Banque de France have come to realize, is what lies behind the steady decrease in the amount of French francs in circulation.
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