Government submits bill on extra tax imposed on high-income retail companies
EnglishThe government has submitted a bill on a special retail tax imposed on high-income companies to Parliament, the Ministry of Finance said.
The ministry's statement explains that the cabinet decided, due to the emergency, that retail companies with revenues exceeding half a billion HUF should contribute to the revenues of the Pandemic Control Fund.
With this special retail tax, Hungary can protect its economic achievements, and so the government continues to count on financial help from high-income retail chains.
The statement emphasizes that the Hungarian tax model is unchanged: individual people and small businesses continue to pay little tax. The aim is to ensure that the burden of the rebalancing tax measures is not borne by the population, but by those who can bear this burden, who have achieved outstanding profits and significant market dominance in the pre-pandemic period. This goal is also confirmed by the Finance Ministry's calculation for the retail market, according to which there are more than 35 thousand companies engaged in retail activities altogether, but only two thousand of them will have to pay this tax and also the administrative burden of submitting tax declarations will be borne only by them.
The rate of the extra tax, which is to be calculated on the basis of annual net sales, is 0.1 per cent between half a billion and 30 billion HUF, 0.4 per cent between 30 billion and 100 billion, and 2.5 per cent over 100 billion.
Companies set and report the extra tax by the last day of the fifth month following the last day of the tax year. They do not have to report the tax advance in the first tax year, as they already did so when they submitted the special tax return ordered because of the emergency, so there is no need for any other reporting in this regard. The tax advance will have to be paid in two equal instalments.
The statement points out that it is important that foreign online commercial multinational companies (such as Amazon, Wish, AliExpress) should not be able to evade the obligation to pay commercial tax either. Based on the data received by the National Tax and Customs Administration, the tax authority can check whether these foreign retail giants comply with their registration and payment obligations in Hungary, the Ministry of Finance said.
