The Hungarian foreign minister called his Chinese counterpart
Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó spoke by phone with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi and discussed bilateral economic relations amid the current global turmoil.
Szijjarto said on social media on Sunday that Chinese investors in Hungary are happy with their local operations as Hungary takes steps to ensure the country maintains its competitive investment environment.
He noted the impact of the war in Ukraine on Europe and the rest of the world, including a runaway inflationary environment, soaring energy prices, a food supply crisis and new waves of migration that ” threaten global stability”.
“I underlined that Hungary has an interest in peace being restored as soon as possible, given that this is the only solution to the challenges posed by the war we are facing,”
writes the minister.
25pc corporate tax rate for multinationals in Hungary?
The opposition LMP has proposed introducing a tax rate above 25% to ensure that multinational companies shoulder their fair share of the public burden, the leader of the party’s parliamentary group said on Sunday. The government says the detailed small business tax (kata) is a form of legalized tax evasion that must be stopped, Péter Ungár told a press conference. LMP believes, however, that it is the very low corporate tax paid by multinationals “that is the real legalized tax evasion”.
Péter Ungár, leader of the parliamentary group of the LMP, the Hungarian environmentalist party. Photo: FB/ungarpeter
Corporate tax revenue amounted to 500 billion forints (1.25 billion euros) in 2021, Ungar said, while the Hungarian oil and gas company
MOL recorded revenues of more than 300 billion forints in the last quarter of last year
— less than two-thirds of the total revenue from corporate tax in Hungary that year. He added that Audi had repatriated 4 trillion forints of profits from the country over the past ten years. Partly because of strategic partnership agreements and partly because of the very low corporate tax rate, large Hungarian companies are not taking their fair share of the public burden, Ungár said.
Ungár said that it is much easier to collect the necessary money in the budget during a crisis from these large companies than from a small entrepreneur who, for example, works in film production and therefore invoices companies .
He also said that LMP thinks it would be very effective to implement a building insulation program in the energy crisis. This would reduce household energy costs, Hungary’s energy dependency and greenhouse gas emissions, while creating jobs and boosting the economy, Ungar said.
Source: MTI
