Bernard Arnault has lost a tax fight he had already won twice. The founder of LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy) and the richest man in Europe has been ordered to pay nearly €22.5M ($25.7M, £19.3M) in back taxes after a Paris appeals court reversed a run of earlier judgments that had gone his way.
The decision, dated 2 July, falls on Arnault and his wife, the concert pianist Hélène Mercier-Arnault. It splits into €12.96M ($14.8M, £11.1M) in income tax, social charges, surcharges, and late-payment interest for 2010, plus €9.5M ($10.8M, £8.1M) in wealth solidarity tax covering 2012 to 2015.
