EU demands share of global corporate tax

Enlarge image

ThyssenKrupp plant in Duisburg: Parts of the so-called border adjustment are also to flow to Brussels

Photo: Ina Fassbender / AFP

For the first time, the European Union (EU) has presented concrete plans on how it wants to repay the debts of its 750 billion euro Corona reconstruction fund.

This emerges from an internal overview that Budget Commissioner Johannes Hahn sent to the European Council and other EU institutions.

Accordingly, the EU wants to secure a share in the new tax system for large companies, which the states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) had recently agreed on. The proposed levy will burden multinational corporations with sales of more than $ 20 billion; it should bring in global revenues of around 150 billion dollars per year.

In addition, the EU claims shares in several financial items of the so-called Fit-for-55 climate package, such as the existing emissions trading for industry and energy.

In addition, emissions trading is to be reformed in such a way that it burdens poorer member states less.

It is also planned that a quarter of the revenue from the new emissions trading for buildings and transport will fill the planned EU social fund to relieve low-wage earners.

In addition, parts of the so-called border adjustment are to flow to Brussels.

The EU intends to use it to burden carbon-intensive imports from the steel, aluminum and cement industries, for example.

Is there enough income?

Hahn wants to introduce the new budget items by 2023;

however, it is uncertain whether he will get the EU Parliament's yes for it.

The green budget expert Rasmus Andresen, for example, doubts that the new OECD tax "will generate enough income".

If this is not the case, he demands, Brussels will have to think about other sources of income, for example "the introduction of a financial transaction tax".

The reconstruction fund is an EU economic stimulus package that was passed in the wake of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic.

The funds are to be raised on the capital market via joint European bonds and issued in the form of loans and grants.

msa