Chronic. Let’s not shy away from our pleasure, well done to the G7 countries for having decided to impose a minimum taxation of their profits of 15% on multinationals. This is less than the 21% proposed by Joe Biden, but it is a first step towards the return of companies to the place of the global village, where everyone must pay their taxes to make living together harmonious.
Kudos to Joe Biden, who has relaunched global tax negotiations (suspended since 2020) for largely domestic reasons: the Democratic president wants to charge Park Avenue, the most chic avenue in New York, rather than Scranton, his working-class hometown. in Pennsylvania; he would like to finance his major works program by increasing the corporate tax rate (IS) from 21 to 28%, while the minimum taxation of foreign profits would be doubled to 21% and its base broadened. To do this, we must show that it is not naive and that other countries also impose their multinationals.
The concern is not new, the United States has long been just as furious as the major European countries to see their fiscal windfall evaporate in Ireland or Luxembourg. In 2017, Donald Trump had started the hunt, with a tax reform that led Apple to repatriate in 2018, 250 billion dollars (205 billion euros) and pay 38 billion (31 billion euros) to the US tax authorities. United. But the Republican president was in a spirit of competition as his successor wants to end the race to lower the corporate tax rate. At least, the G7 decision puts an end to the bidding for the lowest tax bid.
A small-range measure
Well done, too, because the decision will soften the narrative that attributes all the evils of the earth to tax havens and multinationals. To bring things back to their proper proportion, let’s take the figures from the European Tax Observatory, headed by French economist Gabriel Zucman: with a 25% tax, corporate tax revenues would increase by half (170 billion d euros in the European Union, 26 billion in France).
This is certainly incommensurate with the French tax on GAFA (350 million euros in 2019), or the funds recovered in the scandal of the hidden money of the Panama Papers (1.15 billion euros including 126 million by France). But since we are in a systemic debate – is the low taxation of multinationals the cause of the collapse of social and state systems or not? – let’s put the figures in their macroeconomic context. The new tax will bring in 1.1% of the French gross domestic product (GDP), and again, only with a tax of 25%. With the proposed rate of 15%, we are only at 4.3 billion euros, or 0.18% of GDP.
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