Read Charles Bremner's blog on Le Pen

After failing to become a Belgian, Johnny Hallyday, France’s biggest rock star, is planning to move his residence and his money to Switzerland, it emerged yesterday.

The imminent exit of the country’s most popular singer was used by ministers to bolster a promise by Nicolas Sarkozy, the centre-right candidate, to cap France’s crippling taxes on the wealthy.

Hallyday, 63, is an active supporter of the presidential campaign of Mr Sarkozy, who is Interior Minister and leader of the Union for a Popular Movement.

Le rockeur national, who has sold 80 million records since 1961 and is still touring and topping the charts, was reported by L’Express magazine to be aiming to settle in Gstaad, the mountain resort.

It is assumed that he wants to join the 100,000 other rich French citizens who have fled their country’s annual wealth tax. Like Belgium, Switzerland imposes no wealth tax and it taxes only part of the annual income of rich foreigners.

Last summer the Belgian authorities told Hallyday that they were unlikely to grant a request that he made for Belgian nationality. The singer, whose real name is Jean-Philippe Smet, was assumed to be trying to escape France’s punishing annual tax on wealth, although he said that he was making the move because he felt Belgian. His late father was from that country. Belgian citizenship requires prior residence in the country, Hallyday was told.

Hallyday’s planned exit was deplored yesterday by Jean-François Cope, the Budget Minister and government spokesman. “I regret that a number of our compatriots move abroad for tax reasons,” Mr Cope said.

However, other ministers said that the departure of France’s popular icon was shocking proof that the country’s wealth tax drove talented people abroad. “The tax situation in France is no longer acceptable,” said Christian Estrosi, Minister for Town and Country Planning, who is a Sarkozy supporter. “Johnny Hallyday is a source of national pride and part of the heritage. I am proud that he supports Nicolas Sarkozy,” he said.

Mr Sarkozy has dropped earlier promises to abolish the wealth tax but he is promising to limit annual taxes to no more than 50 per cent. This would still represent a hefty sum for Hallyday, whose annual earnings are in the millions of pounds.

The Impôt de Solidarité sur la Fortune, first introduced in the 1980s by the Socialist administration of President Mitterrand, is recognised to be economically counterproductive. It forces capital to flee and is expensive to administer.

However, the wealth tax is popular with most voters and Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate for the spring elections, has promised to crack down on evaders.