Amazon founder Jeff Bezos can look forward to brilliant business in the pandemic
Photo:
MANJUNATH KIRAN / AFP
Restaurateurs, retailers and concert organizers fear the next wave of corona - but some large corporations can hope for brilliant business. After all, that's how it was in the early stages of the pandemic. The streaming service Netflix, for example, gained around 36 million new subscribers worldwide in the crisis year 2020. The US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer made net profits of nearly nine billion dollars with its corona vaccine in the past twelve months.
How much the crisis profiteers earn has now been calculated by researchers from Charles University in Prague on behalf of the left-wing faction in the EU Parliament.
According to this, multinational corporations made extraordinary profits of around 360 billion euros in the corona year 2020.
US corporations were able to post pandemic profits of around 100 billion euros, large German companies won 5, French multinationals an additional 20 billion euros.
"As a result of the pandemic, large companies were able to increase their profits in a number of sectors," says the study.
"It is high time that the corporations do their part"
Most of the extra profits were reported in industry (41 percent), information technology (21 percent) and the financial sector (16 percent). The researchers classified 1763 international companies as crisis winners, with profits in 2020 exceeding their long-term growth trend. While many multinationals were among the profiteers, the profits of small US companies collapsed by 89 percent in the second quarter of 2020 alone. According to the study, tax revenues have also "fallen sharply".
The new data from the two-tier world of the corona economy flare up again the debate about an additional tax for pandemic profiteers.
The left-wing MP Martin Schirdewan calls on the Berlin traffic light parties to “initiate a levy for crisis winners in the EU”.
The state has also supported the profiteers' businesses with its pandemic aid, says the parliamentarian.
"It is high time these corporations made their contribution to crisis management."
"It is wrong to punish successful companies"
Many economists are critical of the proposal.
"I don't believe in punishing successful companies," says Marcel Fratzscher, President of the German Institute for Economic Research.
"It is to be welcomed when a company like Biontech makes high profits that it can reinvest in research." In addition, a pandemic tax would also affect European digital companies, which would have to catch up with the US competition.
It is undisputed that a tax on pandemic profits could generate substantial revenue for states.
If the rate of a corresponding tax were ten percent, the EU states alone could earn an additional five billion euros per year, according to the study.
If the extra profits were even taxed at 30 percent, the revenue would be around 14 billion euros.
It is also foreseeable that the data will fuel the political debate in the left camp.
After numerous Green politicians had campaigned for a pandemic tax in the spring, the left-wing MP Schirdewan now wants to take them at their word.
The Greens would have to show whether they »have the courage to take on the representatives of big business«.
