Actor Gerard Depardieu is paying tax of just six per cent in his adopted country of Russia after Vladimir Putin gave him a passport last year, it was revealed earlier today.
He quit his native France over the punitive 75 percent wealth tax imposed by the socialist government.
The 65-year-old actor filed his tax return on time in the remote region of Mordovia, better known for its prison camps, where he is registered as a self-employed businessman.
This enables him to pay a reduced rate of six per cent compared with the standard Russian flat tax rate of 13 per cent, itself well below Western norms.
The six-percent rate is for entrepreneurs with an annual income of less than 60 million roubles, roughly £1 million, said newspaper Izvestia yesterday.
Depardieu plans to set up a restaurant and arts centre in the dusty regional capital of Saransk but he has not visited for a year. Mordovia is more than 2,000 miles from Paris and 300 miles further east than Moscow.
Local official Valery Maresyev said: ‘There were plans and they haven’t been dropped. Gerard Depardieu will return to them when he finishes other projects.’
The actor, who has become a friend of Putin’s, has appeared in a Russian sitcom, an advertisement for a bank, and played Rasputin in a movie, Daily Mail informs.
