Hungary’s biggest hundred companies, based on net revenue, and its top fifty banks, based on total assets, paid HUF 1,157bn in taxes — including personal income, VAT, corporate, social security and healthcare tax — in 2007, 36pc more than in 2006, a list compiled by tax office APEH shows.
The sharp rise is probably the result of new taxes and tax rises introduced by the government as part of austerity measures in the autumn of 2006. One of the new taxes, the “solidarity tax”, effectively raised the corporate profit tax from 16pc to 20pc.
The 150 companies and financial institutions accounted for 21pc of all tax paid in 2007.
At the top of APEH’s TOP 100 list of companies was oil and gas company MOL, followed by car maker Audi Hungaria. The hundred companies generated HUF 1,744bn in pre-tax profit in 2007, 63pc more than in 2006 and 34pc of total corporate pre-tax profit. Ten of the hundred finished the year in the red, racking up combined losses of HUF 70bn.
At the top of the TOP 50 list of financial institutions was OTP Bank, followed by K and H Bank and MKB Bank. The fifty institutions had combined total assets of HUF 27,867.9bn on December 31, 2007, 18pc more than twelve months earlier. Their combined pre-tax profit rose 2pc to HUF 503.8bn.
Does one laugh or cry at this news?
One would think that evidence of yet further fleecing of the few helps to make the choice (between closing up in HU or somewhere else in the region) go against HU.
Is this something HU wants to advertise? That it chops off its nose to spite its face? When the times get tough, it sticks it to the big investors?
This is right up there with APEH tooting on about how they’re giving bonuses to their staff while most of us see our GDI dwindling; or how APEH are catching more tax evaders… While laudable when taxes are fair, when the taxes are outrageous it sends out the message that to stay in business here can be either very costly or risky; making one think twice about investing here vs next door in Slovakia.
If anything, APEH should be shamed that they didn’t do a good job when the taxes were less onerous leaving us in the current predicament.
And this is something to sing about?
Hardly a way to stimulate the economy.
The stupidity beggers belief.
Coming in to Central/Eastern Europe from anyplace else on Planet Earth, there is now 99 good and valid reasons to set up shop in SK. And maybe a maximum of one in HU: the ladies are nice. Having lived before in Grand Cayman where there are no taxes of any sort to speak of, corporate or personal, the situation in Hungaria looks like a laugh riot – catastrophy edition. No wonder that in North America, even the paprika is now imported from the PRC.