France says 75 per cent tax will apply to footballers Fleur Pellerin, the minister for small industries, said: "Football clubs are a bit above the revenue that one would use to define a small business." But she added that "non-salaried artists and non-salaried athletes won't be affected." The confirmation infuriated France's professional football league, whose head Frédéric Thiriez, warned: "This new tax will cost first division teams €182 million (£154 million). With these crazy labour costs, France will lose its best players, our clubs will see their competitiveness in Europe decline, and the government will lose its best taxpayers. Hardest hit by the tax will be Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), France's wealthiest club, at least 12 of whose players earn more than €1 million a year, according to France Football magazine. They include Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the Swedish striker, on €15 million a year (£12.7 million), and Carlo Ancelotti, the Italian coach, on €12 million (£10.2 million). David Beckham, the former England captain, would escape the supertax because his five-month stint at Qatari-owned PSG was timed to ensure he does not qualify as a French tax resident. While Beckham is soccer's best-paid player with €36 million (£30.5 million) this year, only 5 per cent of that comes from his salary, according to France Football. He has pledged to hand any salary he does earn to charity. Many footballers would already be taxed at France's top marginal rate of 49 per cent, which kicks in at €500,000 (£425,000) a year. Teams would then pay a surcharge to bring the effective tax rate on salaries above €1 million to 75 per cent. Mr Hollande made the 75 per cent tax a cornerstone of last year's presidential campaign, but the constitutional court shot it down as unfair because it applied to individuals and not households. The country's top administrative court then ruled that any rate above 66 per cent could be rejected as confiscatory. Just when France thought it was buried, Mr Hollande last week announced it would be applied over the next two years, but companies would pay, circumventing the courts" objections. "I don't think it's good for French football, it's not good for French clubs and it's not good for the place of (France's) Ligue 1 in the world," PSG chairman Nasser al-Khelaifi told France Info radio. "We do not have the means to pay this tax," said Olympique Marseille head Vincent Labrune. "Even if a soccer club like Olympique Marseille has a bigger media profile than a CAC-40 (blue-chip) company, we are still a medium-sized provincial business," he told Reuters.