One major goals of the Biden administration was to overhaul international tax rules and establish a 15 percent global minimum tax. The US wanted to reverse a decades-long race to the bottom of corporate tax rates after many major corporations shifted headquarters and profits to low-tax jurisdictions, depriving countries of much needed tax money to build new infrastructure, support education and combat health crises.
The new minimum tax rate will apply to companies with annual revenue of more than 750 million euros ($866 million), and would to generate around $150 billion in additional global tax revenue per year.
Hungary was one of the holdouts, Orbán stated theatrically that Hungary was not willing to sign the agreement. His country currently offers a 9 percent corporate tax rate to lure investment to Hungary. The country’s propaganda machine thundered that the “global corporate tax proposal is unfair to Eastern Europe.”
Finance ministry State Secretary András Tállai declared that “Hungary will resist any attempt to adopt any global minimum tax rate… We simply cannot support tax increases, not even if the plan is backed by influential voices.”
Pro-Orbán media explained that Hungary will never give up its right to set tax policy, it is a question of economic sovereignty. The adoption of a global minimum tax would serve the interests of “certain global economic powers” that are being challenged by countries with low tax rates and transparent regulations.
On October 6 it took a 15-minute side-meeting in Paris with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to convince Hungary’s Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó to accept the global minimum tax proposal.
At the end Hungary got a better deal, a transition period of 10 years, rather than the five years originally proposed.
I have the feeling that at the meeting Szijjártó did not bring up one of Orbán’s favorite anti-US jab that the proposal would serve the interests of a “certain global economic power.” Now Orbán’s propaganda machine will sell the deal at home as another victory of the Great Leader in defense of Hungary’s economy and Hungarian jobs.
György Lázár
It shows again the traitor Orbán is.
Orbán is right to grin like a cheshire cat. He did score a victory against a hapless US presidency. A ten year lease on life is eternity in politics. Ten years from now Orbán will be long gone, with the billions of kickbacks from corporate America, that adores him for being able to make a buck at the expense of ordinary Hungarians. This is why the EU’s money managers, working at the behest of Angela and Germany’s central banker never rocked Orbán’s boat the way they rocked Orbán’s former colleague in Greece.
Dear Gyuri and András!
May I ask you something?
What would you live on if our Prime Minister Viktor Orbán would decide to retire?
What job would remain to you?
Poor copatriots…
Well… although it might not feel like a good thing in the pockets of poorer Hungarians , they must at least understand that they have their own currency and not an amalgam of massive overprinting of fiat that’s far worse than the post ww one and is a leverage of the dollar and euro and pound,which are all vastly overprinted in a money casino where the losers constantly stay on the table writing I.O.U s to each other. Ride and Rise higher Hungary! They want you land for cheap ,it’s rich . Just get Orban to make a law whereby only land contaminated with cadmium can be sold to foreigners.
Mark to mark ,post to post , Hungarian property and land is still very cheap .
Hungary could capitalise more on its technological and linguistic and manufacturing skills.
For instance,in data security . It could become an outpost of secure servers, unfettered by US and other countries security and hacking attempts.
In the end it does not matter too much what rate the company tax is……as always ,as we see always and historically………the big players and payers always find all the loopholes and defraud their true tax liabilities….just like David Cameron and Boris the Clown ,Bidden and his Ukrainian deals.
God bless Hungary!!!!
That the ‘Orbán’s propaganda machine will sell the deal at home as another victory of the Great Leader in defense of Hungary’s economy and Hungarian jobs’ is certain.
However, it is the interest of the EU and the western world not to overtax eastern countries, who are today struggling to achieve a somewhat Western standard of living through adapting to capitalism and western investment. Failing to do this would only add oil to the slide of these societies towards the waiting, open arms of eastern dictatorships.
With regard to this EU leech Orbán, it is the responsibility of the Hungarian people, and only the Hungarian people, to get rid of this rascal, blood-sucker for good.
Fodorkám,
I see you brought the circus to town. You wanna know how I would make a living if your PM, Orbán would decide to retire? I would live on showcasing clowns like you, who kept the kleptocrat in power. Don’t worry, you’d be allowed to habilitate the padded cell that serves as your study.
Fodorkám! Anytime your curiosity gets the better of you, don’t hesitate to turn towards me. If I’m out, I’m sure, Gyuri will oblige you. Both of us are here to serve the clowns, that seek our guidance in this underpass.
You are already employed by an ideological circus, called an academic institution.
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/09/25/a-professors-resignation-highlights-pressures-within-academia-to-conform?utm_campaign=editorial-social&utm_medium=social-organic&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR3ugLFv0ebb5jgJXslLK4Jw2J_AgSA8zJjR9Mxd5U3L2CS43pu4NiB3uUM
“Peter boghossian, an untenured assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University (psu), was one of the most vocal critics of post-modern ideology in the academy until he resigned from his university on September 8th. In 2018 he and two authors tried to publish 20 fake papers, in order to expose what they saw as a willingness to publish anything that used the right jargon. Seven were published, including one on “queer performativity” in urban dog parks, and one calling astronomy imperialist and suggesting physics departments study interpretative dance.”
It just ain’t so!!!!
So much garbage from the trolls. HFP is becoming like facebook’s Hu page.
Chris more control is needed. Let the trolls use Magyar Nemzet and Nok Lapja.
@ Karl Busch
I tried to formulate an answer to your very valid critique of life in this underpass, but I simply threw up my hands. This underpass is not made for civilized, rational discourse. You come down here taking your life into your own hands, hold your nose tight, give as good as you get, and get the hell out as fast as you can. An employee of a saw-mill, who is missing most of his fingers on both hands could count on one hand the number of portals in English that focus on the plight of justice, equal rights and ecologically sustainable communal well being in Hungary (I know of only two, yet I am not missing any fingers. In the US it’s Hungarian Spectrum, in Canada it’s the Hungarian Free Press). It’s not the two or three trolls that use this underpass as a dumping ground for Viktor Orbán’s dirty linen, but the silence of the tens of thousands on the overpass, who turn a blind eye to the obscenity that goes on day in and day out above ground in the name of national harmony, and Christian brotherhood in that country, and in the diaspora groups that are financed by Hungary’s cleptocracy in North America. The show down here is but a microcosm of the latest version of Animal Farm that Hungary had become under it’s current pig-headed autocracy.