In May 1998 the French government hit the Watch Tower Society's branch with a bill for 300 million francs back taxes, penalties and interest (roughly $50 million). This was followed in June by a lien on the Society's properties in France. Why? Because the French government classifies the organization as a "dangerous cult" rather than a recognized religion. As a punitive measure, officials imposed a 60% tax on monies received.

Jehovah's Witnesses were declared a "dangerous cult"—along with about 170 other sects— in an official French National Assembly report titled "Cults in France" (No. 2468, by the Commission of Inquiry into Cults, recorded with the Presidency of the National Assembly on December 22, 1995.) The complete report—more than 5000 lines of text in French—can be found at http://www.veloce-skydive.com/Veloce/rapport.sectes.html and a browser search using "Jéhovah" (or "hovah" if you have no accented "é") will reveal sections discussing JWs. (We struggled through using high school French and a translation by ex-JW Ginny Tosken.)

Others featured on the list include the Paris Church of Scientology, the Transcendental Meditation organization, Soka Gakkai International France, Shri Ram Chandra Mission France, Churches of Christ International in France, the French Federation for Krishna Consciousness, Eckankar France, and Rev. Moon's Unification Church. The membership of all the other sects combined amounts to just a fraction of the JWs active in France, making the Witnesses the most visible target for the government Commission.

According to Section I.A.2.d. of the report, the Commission classified a sect as a "dangerous cult," if it met any of these criteria:

mental destabilization exorbitant financial requirements isolation from society danger to physical health enlistment of children

anti-social rhetoric disruption of public order significant legal cases economic disruption attempts to infiltrate government