Poland and Hungary call for domestic business opt-out from G7 tax deal

  • Date: 09-Jun-2021
  • Source: Financial Times
  • Sector:Economy
  • Country:Middle East
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Poland and Hungary call for domestic business opt-out from G7 tax deal

Poland and Hungary will not support the plan to introduce a global minimum corporate tax level agreed by G7 finance ministers this weekend unless there is a carve-out to protect substantive business activities in their countries, according to their finance ministries.

The stand taken by the two central European countries suggests resistance to a deal within the EU could stretch well beyond Ireland and other destinations favoured by multinationals seeking to minimise their tax burdens.

"We shouldn't have the G7 dictating what tax rate we have in our country,“ Tadeusz Koscinski, Poland's finance minister, told the Financial Times. Setting a lower tax rate was an important way for countries to catch up with more advanced economies by attracting innovation from abroad, he said.

But Koscinski also insisted that Poland, which has a headline corporate rate of 19 per cent, did not wish to lure companies to Poland for the purposes of minimising their tax burden.

He said any global agreement would have to distinguish between profit-sharing and "substantial business activities“.

"We don't support the idea of a minimum tax on the profits companies make in Poland on business in Poland,“ he said.

Any global deal would have to have a "substantial carve-out on business done domestically“,