Albert Uderzo vs. Bactaxus Caesar

[steepholm]

I can't draw for toffee, but I'm outraged on behalf of Albert Uderzo, who is being asked to pay €203,000 in tax on the money he earned for producing the Asterix books with René Goscinny. In France, authors get tax breaks, but the authorities have decided that Goscinny was the sole author and Uderzo merely the illustrator - a journeyman category that receives no such favours. Have they no sense of what an artistic collaboration is? I'd have expected that France, with its long tradition of graphic novels, would be more enlightened about this kind of thing. What with this and President Sarkozy thinking that Alsace is part of Germany, I begin to worry that the French government is losing the plot.