This is one of the best results in the history of the CAC 40. Driven by oil and gas prices, TotalEnergies’ net profit amounted to 20.5 billion dollars in 2022, that is, more than 19 billion euros after taxes. Unprecedented for the oil group.
This performance will not fail to revive the debate on the taxation of “super profits”, especially since TotalEnergies is regularly pointed out for the low level of taxes paid by the group in France.
However, in the press release that details its results, TotalEnergies ensures that it will pay 33,000 million dollars (30,700 million euros) in taxes and production fees in the world by 2022, compared to 15,900 million dollars in 2021 and 6 billion dollars in 2020.
“200 million” in corporate tax in France
The oil group, which has not paid profit taxes in France for several years due to its loss-making activity in France, will have to go through the cash register this time. In an interview granted to ParisianThe CEO of TotalEnergies, Patrick Pouyanné, affirms that the company has “obtained some 350 million euros of profits in France” in 2022 and that it will pay “200 million euros in corporate taxes and European solidarity on refining and electricity”, in addition of “more than 2,000 million euros in taxes and social contributions”.
At the end of January, the head of TotalEnergies already indicated that his group must pay more than “2,000 million” in solidarity contributions on benefits within the European Union and the United Kingdom. “Refining has been losing money for years, and now the year we started to earn 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 had summarized himself.
As a reminder, the temporary European solidarity contribution should be set at 33% of the share of super profits for 2022, that is, profits more than 20% higher than the average for the years 2019-21, taking into account the measures adopted by the States that already tax these benefits.
“We do not tax the same benefit twice”
If TotalEnergies is to pay tax on profits this year in France, some will no doubt deplore that the amount paid to tax authorities will be particularly low compared to amounts paid in other countries. “I am aware of the debate that this raises when we compare the $33 billion of taxes and duties paid elsewhere,” says Patrick Pouyanné in the parisian. But, he specifies, it is “because our results are mainly in energy-producing countries, in Norway, Great Britain, Angola, Nigeria, Abu Dhabi or even Qatar. (…) However, I remember a principle of law: you do not tax the same profit twice.
The manager also recalls that TotalEnergies does not produce “neither oil nor gas” in France where its activity is limited to the production and distribution of electricity and the distribution of fuel in 3,500 service stations, “activity on which we earn an average of 1 cent per liter of fuel sold”, points out Patrick Pouyanné. Before concluding by recalling despite everything that TotalEnergies has “returned 550 million euros to French motorists with the various discounts at the pump for several weeks”, which “has not done anywhere else”.
Source: BFM TV
