The idea of a tax seduces the opposition, much less the government. One thing is in any case certain: energy companies will be called upon to participate in the effort against price inflation.
Does superprofit exist? This notion has been at the heart of the economic debates of recent weeks, as energy companies have seen their revenues boosted by the rise in energy prices – itself driven up by the war in Ukraine. At the Assembly, a “flash mission on the oil and gas companies and those in the shipping sector that have made windfall profits during the crisiswhose subject, if not clearly specified by the title, is superprofits. Several bosses of energy companies like that of Total, Engie or CMA-CGM should be heard.
In government, several discourses coexist on this issue. “I don’t know what superprofits are.”, had dropped Bruno Le Maire in front of the Medef, at the end of August. Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne had meanwhile indicated that shedid not close the doorto a taxation of superprofits. If Bercy tells us that there is “no discrepancywith Matignon, the difference in rhetoric is notable, and reveals the sensitivity of a broader debate: do superprofits exist, and should they be taxed?
Read alsoSuperprofits: Pannier-Runacher defends the establishment of a “contribution on energy producers”
We owe the first mention of the “superprofitsto Karl Marx, who evokes this term in Das Kapital, book published in 1867. According to him, this word can be applied to several different situations. A company makessuperprofitswhen it is technologically more advanced than its competitors, and therefore observes higher productivity. Likewise if it benefits from a technological monopoly.
The word reappears at the time of the First World War and changes meaning: it is then affixed to situations in which “the profit linked to an exceptional situation, to a form of income, than to a real innovation“, as explained by Mathieu Plane, deputy director of the analysis and forecasting department of the French Observatory of economic conditions (OFCE). This is the definition still in use.
In 1916, in France, the government of Aristide Briand set up a “extraordinary contribution on war profits“, which will tax the profits made by certain companies thanks to the surge in military orders. The creation of a “exceptional taxation» like that of «war profiteers” thus becomes one of the criteria of the war economy, underlines Pierre Dockès, historian and honorary professor at the University of Lyon 2.
Read alsoSuperprofits: the Twenty-Seven are working on a mechanism targeting energy companies
political concept
The idea of taxing superprofits appealed to the opposition. During the examination of the amending finance bill, a dozen amendments were tabled to this effect – all of them were ultimately rejected. But the left intends to return to the charge. On August 26 on RTL, the First Secretary of the Socialist Party Olivier Faure had thus announced his desire to “to propose a referendum of shared initiative at the start of the school year which will make it possible to solicit the French men and women to force the government to have a debate on this question“.
Creating a tax as such is, however, a risky option for the government. On the political level, first of all: Emmanuel Macron had promised during his presidential campaign this year that no tax increase would be on the program for the five-year term, or even that taxation would be reduced. “This is the basis“, we always agree at Bercy.
But the taxation of superprofits is also delicate on the legal level, since under the principle of equality before the tax, “the same tax regime must then apply to all taxpayers placed in the same situation“. The legislator should therefore find a tax base that only concerns energy companies benefiting financially from the crisis, without targeting them by name.
Read alsoSuperprofits: the Twenty-Seven are working on a mechanism targeting energy companies
Faced with these various pitfalls, the French government and the European Commission have decided to act. But without using the wordtaxnor the wordsuperprofits“. The Twenty-Seven are working on a “contribution” on the “windfall profits“. The income of energy companies that produce nuclear or renewable energy would be capped, and the difference between actual income and the cap would be levied by the States. They would then have the freedom to distribute them among households and businesses that are suffering from the rise in energy prices, driven by the inflation of gas prices. The terms change, but the objective is clear: to involve in the effort the companies which, in spite of themselves, take advantage of the economic situation.