Bill to tax multinational firms
The Greek government is proceeding with the imposition of an additional tax at a rate of 15% on multinational companies and subsidiaries operating in Greece with annual revenues exceeding 750 million euros, from which they estimate that they can collect the amount of €80 million.
The draft law was put up for public consultation on Thursday night and will be submitted to the Parliament in the first 10 days of March.
In Greece there are 19 Greek business groups and 900-950 subsidiaries of foreign groups which exceeded €750 million in consolidated turnover for at least two of the last four years.
Essentially, this is about the integration of a European directive, through which Greece will harmonize with the rest of the EU countries and the relevant OECD initiative.
With this initiative, as noted by the Finance Ministry, an additional important step is being taken to address the problem of tax evasion. It will also deal with the unfair tax competition resulting from the understatement of profits by large companies operating both in this country and in other member-states.
The new system imposes a global minimum level of taxation, a minimum effective tax rate of 15% for multinational companies and large groups.
Applying that rate can result in an additional additional tax of up to 15% on profits if these businesses paid less than this in tax. To date, it has been adopted by 132 countries and is mandatory from January 1 in EU member-states.
Therefore, both multinational business groups and large-scale national groups with an annual turnover of more than €750 million should be compulsorily taxed at a minimum effective tax rate that cannot fall below 15%.
On a European and global level, ministry sources note, one observes the phenomenon of large multinationals and their subsidiaries making use of a series of tools, such as tax or investment provisions, ultimately managing to pay less tax, even many times below that which would result if the minimum effective tax rate of 15% were applied to their earnings.
