Tribune. In recent years, tax evasion scandals have been repeated and similar. However, we, environmentalists, assure it: they are not inevitable. The “Pandora Papers” are the result of a deliberate policy of protecting the powerful, which threatens any possibility of living together.
This indecency is a choice. And Emmanuel Macron multiplies these nauseating choices in favor of the ultra-rich, to the detriment of the most fragile. In favor of gigantic multinationals, to the detriment of SMEs. At European level, just over the past six months, a few are particularly revealing:
In spring 2021: the French government weighs down the ambition of transparency on the taxation of multinationals by defending a “safeguard clause” to allow multinationals not to disclose their tax information for several years, all in the name of the sacrosanct “business secrecy” . However, the publication of the number of employees or the turnover achieved in each of the countries where multinationals operate is an essential source of information to prevent tax evasion. The government is therefore making a choice: opacity rather than transparency.
The complicit government
In April 2021 : US President Joe Biden launches the proposal for a minimum effective corporate tax rate of 21% globally. The opportunity is historic to stop the business of tax havens. Yet… Once again, Bruno Le Maire scuttles the case by remaining on a minimalist position, offering a much lower rate.
The French government is thus complicit in large-scale tax evasion: while a rate of 21% would allow the European Union (EU) to collect 100 billion euros in additional tax revenue in 2021 alone, a rate of 15% halves this income. The great escape of multinationals is protected at the expense of fairness, tax justice, social justice.
In October 2021, finally : the day after the publication of the “Pandora Papers”, the French government, along with the other member states, validates a blacklist of tax havens as short as it is ridiculous. Only nine countries are included, including none of the main countries pinned in the “Pandora Papers” such as the United States, the British Virgin Islands or the United Arab Emirates. Worse: three tax havens are removed from the list … including the Seychelles yet at the heart of the scandal. Here again, the government makes the deliberate choice to let it go, instead of sanctioning countries complicit in tax theft.
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