The solidarity contribution on the profits of the energy groups that TotalEnergies will have to pay in 2022 “will exceed two billion” euros in the European Union and the United Kingdom, the general director of TotalEnergies, Patrick Pouyanné, told the Belgian press.
Within the perimeter of the European Union and the United Kingdom, “we have exceeded two billion new taxes in Europe in the context of the energy crisis,” says Patrick Pouyanné in this interview published over the weekend in French-speaking Belgian newspapers. the echo and De Tijd, Dutch-speaking.
In October, the group had already estimated “the impact of the European solidarity tax at one billion euros” in 2022, specifying that this European solidarity tax would be due in six EU countries: France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, mainly in its refining activities, as well as in the Netherlands and Denmark for exploration and production activities.
“Refining lost money for years, and now the year we started making money, it is taxed excessively as super-profit, when it is only profit,” lamented the leader. However, the French giant will not dispute this contribution at a European level. Instead, he will draw “the consequences”: “in the United Kingdom we will invest less,” he summed up.
33 billion dollars and taxes in 2023
Patrick Pouyanné also specified that his group would pay “33 billion dollars” in taxes and duties worldwide in 2022. “We are among the 10 largest taxpayers in the world,” he said. The debate over the “super profits” of oil and gas companies is likely to resurface when their annual results are released. TotalEnergies has already announced a new record profit in the third quarter, of 6,600 million dollars and it will not escape him: “I understand that there is a social, collective, complicated issue there. And I understand how you say that it annoys”, says Patrick Pouyanne.
The European Commission had indicated in late September that it wanted to claim a “temporary solidarity contribution” from gas, coal and oil producers and distributors who are making massive profits from rising prices after the war in Ukraine. It must be set at 33% of the participation in the super profits of 2022, that is, profits that are more than 20% higher than the average of the years 2019-21, taking into account the measures adopted by the States that already tax these profits . France has transposed it into its 2023 budget.
The Commission was careful not to use the word “tax” because any new tax provision at European level would have required unanimity of the Twenty-seven, a more complicated and risky procedure than adoption by qualified majority.
Source: BFM TV
