Brussels: Tax on companies with a turnover of more than 100 million euros

The Commission proposes increasing its revenue to avoid having to increase States' contributions to its budgets.

The European Commission is proposing an ambitious plan to increase its revenue without raising contributions from Member States. Along with the presentation of her new budget, the President of the European Commission , Ursula von der Leyen, announced a barrage of measures, primarily taxes and duties, with which she will seek to boost revenue collection by nearly €60 billion annually.

One of the most controversial proposals in this package is a new tax on companies operating in the European Union. All companies with a minimum annual turnover of €100 million will be subject to the new EU tax, which is divided into three groups.

Companies with revenues between €100 and €250 million must pay €100,000 annually. For those with revenues between €250 and €500 million, the sum rises to €250,000, and if revenues exceed €500 million, the amount payable increases to €500,000 annually.

Furthermore, the tax will be levied at the company level, not the corporate group level, so companies with subsidiary or multi-company structures will pay the specified amounts multiple times. With this measure, Brussels expects to raise around €6.8 billion annually.

The European Commission has finally raised the minimum threshold for the tax to apply from the €50 million proposed in the draft budget released last week by the Financial Times.

The EU executive also proposes that a portion of the excise taxes collected by states on tobacco, 15%, be allocated to EU coffers, which would generate approximately €11.2 billion annually for Brussels, according to its own calculations. This measure would be implemented through an update to the Tobacco Excise Duty Directive (TED), which would reflect the larger increase in taxes on the sector.

Added to this would be a new tax on uncollected electronic waste, a tax that is estimated to generate around €15 billion annually.

Finally, the European Commission is counting on part of the revenue from the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism , an EU climate tariff, and the Emissions Trading System, which would contribute 1.4 billion and 9.6 billion, respectively.

The new tax collection formulas proposed by Brussels will have to be approved by the Member States, an extremely complicated task considering that this type of proposal in the EU requires unanimity. According to EU sources, the most common scenario would be for them to be watered down or even rejected.

The Twenty-Seven have already rejected proposals from the European Commission to increase their own funds at a much more delicate time than the current one, when the EU was facing the pandemic and had to finance the €750 billion recovery fund.