“Super profits”: this new tax to which the government no longer closes the door

No new tax. It’s almost a mantra: from 2018, Emmanuel Macron reassured the French and the French, recalls La Croix on its site. At the time, continue our colleagues, it was a question of compensating for the abolition of the housing tax, but the executive refused any tax reform likely to rest on the shoulders of the taxpayer. “There will be no creation of a new local tax, nor a national tax, there will be no increase in pressure”, declared the head of state at the time. Words that he and his ministers have constantly hammered throughout his first term of office, even though some are now paying for the disappearance of the local levy previously mentioned.

In July 2022, more recently therefore, Bruno Le Maire reiterated the initial promise of the Head of State. “Not only will there be no tax increase, but we will continue to lower taxes”, he declared the day after the presentation of the text of the purchasing power bill, on the set of France. Info. Let’s not forget either Emmanuel Macron who, regarding the Paris Olympic Games, also undertook not to have recourse to taxation to finance the event. He has also planned several devices for the occasion, recalls Liberation.

Only here it is: lately, at the end of the health crisis and at the dawn of an economic crisis which seems to never end, the discourse of the executive is changing little by little. Elisabeth Borne, Prime Minister since the beginning of Emmanuel Macron’s new mandate, recently affirmed that she was not “closing the door” to some form of new tax. There is now talk of taxing the “super profits” made during the Covid-19 coronavirus epidemic by certain companies. What there is to know.

“Nobody would understand that companies are making exceptional profits even though the French may be worried about their purchasing power”, declared Elisabeth Borne, during the first interview granted during the summer break, this Saturday August 27, in the columns of the Parisian. What open, from the outset, the hypothesis of a taxation of these same profits… as the Nupes was able to suggest before the presidential majority.

And the head of government confirms her point: “I am not closing the door to taxing super profits”. “As a priority, I think that companies that make super profits must return purchasing power to the French by mobilizing the measures voted in early August”, she continues, referring in particular to the Macron bonus in particular, the ceiling of which has recently been raised.

That being said, there is an even more effective solution according to Elisabeth Borne… Explanations.

For the Prime Minister, the taxation of “super profits” of companies is only one solution among others, recalls Capital. It is not the most relevant, she argues… but there is a small problem: the State is not necessarily able to impose the best option.

“I think that the most effective and the most concrete for the French is when a company, when it can, lowers prices for the consumer and gives purchasing power to its employees”, estimates the head of government. . The ball is therefore in the court of the bosses…