Should taxes be hiked in France after the COVID crisis?

There are frequent proposals in France to increase taxes (on wealth, high incomes, multinationals, etc.) with different objectives: To f inance an increase in some public spending items; To i nvolve all categories of economic agents in the recovery effort; To s imply reduce inequalities. But these arguments should be treated with utmost caution, as: Given the level of public spending in France, it is highly doubtful that the shortcomings of the public healthcare, education and housing systems stem from insufficient public spending; It would be incoherent to want to attract French savings into companies and to reintroduce a much higher tax on capital income than in any other country. Moreover, the crisis has demonstrated the very high risk of holding equities and corporate bonds: if th is risk is increased by high taxation, demand for risky savings will disappear; The level of income inequality is lower in France than in other OECD countries thanks to large-scale redistributive policies. The aim should not be to further increase the generosity of redistributive policies, but to reduce primary income inequality before redistribution (by raising labour force skills and the employment rate by hiking wages in some occupations and developing profit-sharing and co-determination schemes).