France has ordered Bernard Arnault, the country’s richest man, to pay €22.5mn of back taxes after a years-long legal battle.
Arnault and his wife should have paid tax on most of a €50 million payment they received after taking money out of a Belgian holding company that held shares related to luxury giant LVMH, an administrative court has ruled.
In successive court cases since 2020, Arnault contested the arguments made by the tax authorities and had prevailed twice before this reversal. A spokesman for him said he would again appeal.
The ruling was first reported by media outlet l’Informé on Saturday.
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The tycoon has been a vocal opponent of wealth tax proposals. He lashed out at one promoted by prominent academic, Gabriel Zucman last year that was pushed by leftist parties, saying it would be “deadly to the French economy”. He dismissed Zucman as “a far-left activist ... who puts his pseudo-academic competencies in the service of his ideology”.
After heavy lobbying from business interests, the proposed “Zucman tax” failed in parliament. It would have required people with fortunes of more than €100 million to pay a minimum of 2 per cent tax annually on all their assets, including their companies, shares of companies and unrealised gains.
Arnault and his family are the controlling owners of LVMH – known for brands such as Louis Vuitton, Moët Hennessy and Dior – via a 50.01 per cent stake.
The Bloomberg Billionaires index puts him as the eighth richest person in the world, with a fortune worth $165 billion.
The tax dispute stemmed from a restructuring in which Arnault transferred LVMH-related shares into a Belgian holding company in exchange for shares in the Belgian entity. Years later, when the company returned about €50 million to him by reducing its share capital, Arnault argued that the payment should have been treated as a tax-free repayment of capital.
But tax authorities maintained that most of it should instead be treated as taxable distributed income.
In the ruling, the court reinstated about €22.5 million in additional income tax, social charges and related wealth tax liabilities.
“This ruling, which overturns both the first-instance judgment and an earlier decision by the same appeal court, will be appealed to the Conseil d’État,” said Arnault’s spokesman, referring to France’s highest administrative court.
The spokesperson added: “LVMH is France’s biggest corporate taxpayer. The group’s overall activities also contribute more than 1 per cent of the country’s GDP.”
The company’s total income tax payments rose to about €5.5 billion last year, more than €300 million higher than 2024, according to its finance director in an earnings call.
Arnault was caught in a furore in 2012 after he applied for Belgian citizenship, in addition to his French citizenship, in a move that critics said was aimed at optimising his tax affairs.
At the time, then Socialist president François Hollande was proposing a “supertax” of 75 per cent on earnings over €1 million a year, which ultimately was not implemented.
In an interview with Le Monde newspaper at the time, Arnault said the move aimed to “better protect the Belgian foundation I established, with the sole objective of ensuring the continuity and integrity of the LVMH group should I die and my heirs fail to reach agreement”.
He later abandoned the citizenship application.
Another French billionaire, Liliane Bettencourt, whose family owns part of cosmetics group L’Oréal, had to pay back taxes after prolonged disputes with authorities.
The Franco-American Wildenstein family, who made their fortune in international art, also fought with the government over offshore trusts, resulting in Guy Wldenstein being convicted for tax fraud in 2024. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026
