PARIS: France will follow Britain and slap a 50 percent tax on bankers' bonuses above 27,500 euros (40,000 dollars), Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said Wednesday.

Lagarde told reporters after a cabinet meeting that a bill detailing the new tax would be presented to parliament in January.

"The banks will see their bonuses of more than 27,500 euros taxed in 2010 and it will be a 50 percent tax," she said.

Britain announced a 50 percent tax on bonuses above 25,000 pounds last Wednesday, arguing that it would help recoup cash spent rescuing the financial sector after the 2008 financial meltdown.

The British move came amid public fury over a decision by 70 percent government-owned Royal Bank of Scotland to award some 1.5 billion pounds in bonuses to senior staff.

President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown agreed during a meeting in Brussels last week to tax bankers' bonuses as part of a drive to make banks more responsible.

"This is a proposal that the president made in August and that we fought for on the international level," said Lagarde.

"It is now a British and French proposal and I will defend it before parliament in January."

French bank BNP Paribas came under fire in August over its plan to pay more than a billion euros in bonuses, although it insisted it was acting within Group of 20 rules and argued that foreign banks might otherwise poach its best staff.

Sarkozy and Brown have won praise for targeting banks.

Aid organisation Oxfam said they had "thrown down the gauntlet to the rest of the world" and that billions could be raised with the tax "to help pay for schools and clinics and tackle climate change at home and abroad."