Hungarian greens: government created a tax haven for global corporations

The opposition LMP’s co-leader called for the introduction of a global minimum tax and the taxation of foreign-owned large companies at a press conference on Saturday.

Responding to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s radio interview on Friday, Máté Kanász-Nagy said that taxation in Hungary almost exclusively favours large companies and multinationals. The government has “created a tax haven for global corporations” and that is why the prime minister called the global minimum tax a “job killing tax hike”, he added.

In this context, LMP made an amendment proposal to the corporate tax act, which would make the corporate tax fairer by introducing a second bracket. According to their plan, the current 9 percent tax would remain unchanged up to sales revenue of 500 million, and a 25 percent tax bracket would be introduced above that limit.

Read also: Government knows how they could reduce Hungary’s dependency on Russian gas

Kanász-Nagy questioned Orbán’s remarks concerning the need for cheap gas procured from Russia, arguing that Russian gas was not cheap.

Instead of the unsustainable and expensive dependence on Russian gas, Kanász-Nagy called for incentives for the use of renewable energy sources, noting that Hungary’s Recovery and Resilience Facility plan contained specific commitments to utilise solar and wind energy. He added that the additional revenue from the amended corporate tax system could be used to finance Hungary’s green transition and sustainable energy supply.