Companies warn of a flight of investments if double taxation is applied to multinationals

Companies warn of a flight of investments if double taxation is applied to multinationals

The Government studies that large companies pay more in Corporate Tax for their business abroad, as is already the case in neighboring countries

  The Government needs to raise more to be able to face the battery of social proposals that are intended to be carried out. In addition, he must make some concession to Podemos since he needs your support to approve the Budgets. As a result, measures to increase taxes on large companies are being studied.

Thus, the Executive is analyzing the proposal of Unidos Podemos to tighten the taxation of the profits obtained by the companies through the dividends of their foreign affiliates, as sources of the Treasury confirmed this newspaper. And just knowing the information, the companies were positioned against, as expected.

  The president of Cepyme (Spanish Confederation of Small and Medium Enterprises) and candidate for the CEOE's Presidency, Antonio Garamendi, affirmed on Wednesday that this measure is "outrageous" and warned the government that if this goes ahead, there will be companies and banks that relocate. "If you force them to pay in two places, they will relocate," he said. Likewise, Garamendi affirmed that returning to double taxation treaties will bring "problems". "I recommend to Unidos we can set up a company with double taxation and they will realize what it is", the vice president of the CEOE came to ironic.

The initiative would mainly affect the large Spanish multinationals, which would pay more for the benefits they obtain from their foreign subsidiaries by limiting the double taxation exemption.

These exemptions for bilateral agreements that are currently at 100% would be approximately 95% to increase the collection of Corporation Tax. In 2016 - the last year with available data - the companies registered a positive accounting result that exceeded 198,000 million euros, according to the annual collection report of the Tax Agency. Of that figure, the companies subtracted more than 105,000 million for benefits of their subsidiaries in other countries for the exemption of double taxation.

In their defense, from the Government say that this measure "is already applied in other countries" of the environment, such as Italy, Germany and France, since there is a European directive that enables it. Of course, as for the collection that would be achieved with this measure, they do not want to give a figure because it depends "on the configuration that is established".