The designation “super profit” used by the Commission for the increased profits shown by the energy companies due to the increase in the price of natural gas, allowed for their extraordinary additional taxation and in fact with a rate of 70%-90%. These profits are indeed super profits, but they are not due to a fraudulent strategy on the part of the companies, but simply to the international situation. From one point of view, the governments are doing very well and taxing them exceptionally, because they have to support the citizens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But, suddenly, and while no one protested about the taxation of the super profits of the energy companies, some European politicians, most importantly Pedro Sanchez of Spain, adopt the same logic and impose a tax on the banks that see their profits increase sharply from the interest rate hike policy of the ECB. The profits of the banks are increasing exponentially, because while they raise the interest rates on the loans, they do not pay the depositors accordingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The question is whether these profits are indeed excess profits and whether they should be taxed as such. This is a long debate with arguments on both sides, but the truth is that if the banks made sure to increase the interest rates they pay to depositors accordingly, no one could accuse them of excess profits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite the bankers’ reasonable objections, the final line of defense of the Sanchez policy is that society needs support and that’s why the banks are not justified in protesting. So the dogs are tied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, the banks also have valid arguments, namely that the increase in interest rates is imposed by the ECB and not by the commercial banks, and that all these years the banking industry was tormented by negative interest rates and was not helped by the Spanish state. Both are true, but at least in Greece the banks were supported by the state as much as anyone else – and that’s why they didn’t go bankrupt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And because the matter is not at all simple (and that is why the debate is big) the problem of the Greek banks that would have led them to bankruptcy a decade ago was largely created by the Greek state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the interesting thing is that the banks in Europe are “sacred cows” and they are protected. It looks like that is changing now. And that apart from Sanchez, Hungary has also imposed such a tax on banks, and Poland in the past and Great Britain is reportedly thinking about it (or rather was thinking about it until the government fell, let’s see now what the new prime minister will do of, when elected).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So if the merry-go-round of taxing windfall profits begins in Europe whenever and wherever the governments decide, it is not excluded that we will see other, “strange” taxes in relation to what we know so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The tax imposed by Sanchez on the banks is of the “windfall tax” type (as if to say a tax on extraordinary and accidental profits, such as those resulting from the increase in interest rates due to inflation). Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s coalition government in Spain is on a collision course with the European Central Bank, which says it opposes the measure, but its protests are not being heard – they are advisory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Sanchez’s statements, this tax is necessary to support citizens and is similar in logic to the tax imposed by governments on the “super profits” of energy companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many international bankers and economists consider these to be populist policies, and they are certainly somewhat right.
But if we don’t just see it as a populist policy, but try to identify a substantial change in mentality, we can assume that the policy change imposed on the European Union first by the corona virus and then by the war and the energy crisis, is the basis for the formation of a new European practice more “socialist”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A policy that taxes with additional amounts what profits it characterizes as extraordinary and that subsidizes the citizens. In one perspective, socialism is coming back to Europe through the window, out of necessity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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