The Artful Tax Dodger

To most Frenchmen tax evasion is an instinct, and to some a career. When the tax collector comes to inspect his house, his books and his way of life for an estimate of his income, the practiced, big-time evader sends his new American car to the country, brings down his shabbiest furniture from the attic, gives the servants the day off, and greets the collector in a borrowed suit.

France's small shopkeepers and artisans pay only a 2.7% tax on their turnover. But any tax at all is an outrage perpetrated by "that government in Paris." By last week a glib, handsome young (34) bookseller named Pierre Poujade had organized this native outrage into a political nuisance called the "Union for the Defense of Commerce and Artisanry." Comes the Revenooer. In Rodez 4,000 UDCAers mobbed tax men trying to in spect the books of M. Salvan's pottery shop, and hustled collectors and their police escorts out of town. At Autun 700 Poujade vigilantes frightened inspectors out of Louis Barnay's butcher shop. At Perigueux 500 defended the town's black smith against collectors. In the past 18 months, some 500 UDCA demonstrations by provincial citizenry have frustrated tax collectors. Moaned a government official: "All we can do is be patient. If the weather gets cold, and the roads get icy, they'll have to stay indoors. Maybe that will stop them." Poujade got his movement started when tax collectors came to his village in Southern France a year and a half ago. Pou jade, an ex-stevedore, professional bicycle rider and prewar Fascist-party politician who fled to England and fought in the R.A.F. during the war, was a municipal councillor. The villagers asked him for help. Poujade sympathized: "I cheat on my taxes, and I always have. I couldn't get by otherwise," he told them. He organized his first successful resistance mob.

Soon, merchants from other towns were writing and telephoning for advice. Even priests enthusiastically offered to ring church bells to warn of the approach of revenue officers. Poujade forgot his bookselling business, and began rushing around France in his Citroen, organizing and making speeches. "We are the mules of the nation," he shouted amid the delighted roars of some 3,000 followers in Tours last week. "They are not simply killing us.

They are beating us to death. We must rise and we must act, and not in the traditional manner. They have their laws, but their laws are illegal. Our real place is at the head of the country." He ended with an appeal to join his crusade. "Make the sacrifice of a thousand-franc bill," cried Pierre Poujade. "Think of your responsibilities!" Million-Dollar Take. So far, some 400,000 Frenchmen in nearly every section of France have made the sacrifice, providing Poujade with a prospective treasury this year of some 400 million francs or more than $1 million. In return, Poujade provides tax-evasion advice and devises new tactics. Sample: when police seized the furniture, clothes and inventory of a defaulting shopkeeper and put them up for public auction, Poujade filled up the auction with cronies who offered absurdly low bids, finally bought all the items for a total of no francs ($0.31) and triumphantly returned them to the shopkeeper.

"We're not revolutionaries, we're just rebels against fiscality," says Poujade.

Next month he is planning his biggest demonstration yet: a mammoth show in Paris, for which he has hired four halls.

By shuttling among them, he hopes to address 200,000 people in a single afternoon. Nominally a Gaullist, Pierre Poujade disclaims political ambition but he is rapidly becoming a political force to reckon with. He affects to despise the National Assembly and all its present membership. "They closed all the brothels in France but left the biggest one open," he says scornfully.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.