BUDAPEST: Hungary is considering following Poland in introducing a new progressive tax on retailers this year, a senior Hungarian government official said.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s right-wing government has already imposed big windfall taxes on banks, energy firms and retail companies since it took power in 2010 – taxes that helped cut the budget deficit to about 2 percent of economic output last year.
Last year, Hungary’s government had to reduce an inspection fee on major food retail chains after the European Commission said the way it was structured unfairly favoured firms with a low turnover.
But Kristof Szatmary, commissioner in charge of trade policy, told the Magyar Idok daily newspaper that the government had not given up on taxing bigger retailers.
Big foreign-owned chains active in Hungary include Tesco , Auchan, Lidl, Aldi and Spar.
Budapest was “watching the reaction of Brussels” to the new Polish retail tax, Szatmary said in the interview published on Wednesday.
“The main question is whether the Poles come up with the sort of progressive tax system that could also work in Hungary,” Szatmary was quoted as saying.
Poland’s finance ministry said on Monday it planned to impose a new progressive tax rate for retailers with monthly sales of more than 1.5 million zlotys ($365,800), to collect around 2 billion zlotys this year.
The Polish ministry said the tax rate would amount to 0.7 percent of monthly sales under 300 million zlotys and 1.3 percent above that.
Poland’s ruling PiS party, which won an outright parliamentary majority in October, has already imposed a new bank tax bill which will become binding on Feb.1.
