Six EU countries are intensifying calls for a bloc-wide windfall tax on oil companies as profits surge amid the war in the Middle East, according to a letter seen by Euronews.
The finance ministers of Germany, Italy, Austria, Poland, and Portugal, along with Spain's economy minister, sent a joint letter to Ireland's finance minister, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency. The ministers urged that a levy be added to the agenda for next month's meeting of EU finance chiefs in Dublin.
Why not simply have a corporate tax rate that has a progressively higher rate for higher profits, just like income taxes? Then corporations have additional incentives to reinvest profits and they can better plan ahead, instead of having populist one-off measures at random intervals.
While they're at it, why not simply levy corporate taxes at the EU level and use them to (partially) fund the EU budget? Then this whole race to the bottom is no issue, and (intra-EU) tax havens like Ireland, Netherlands and Luxembourg can no longer exist.