Budget 2027: MEPs abolish the surtax on the profits of large companies

A gift to big business. The deputies removed on Tuesday, by two votes, the renewal of the surtax on the profits of large companies planned in the 2027 budget. But this vote will probably remain without future for a text promised in the 49th.

3 or orders. By 79 votes to 77, the Assembly adopted, against the advice of the government, deletion amendments. They were submitted by the RN, the UDR, the Republican Right, Horizons and even two elected officials from the Macronist EPR group.

This setback for the executive, however, risks being short-lived. Some 400 companies concerned In the absence of a majority in the Assembly, the government seems condemned to pass its budget by 49.3 or by ordinance, two routes which would allow it to reintroduce the measure.

This was actually what happened last year. Rejected by the deputies on new reading, the surcharge was only included in the 2026 budget thanks to 49. 3.

The vote on the entire “revenue” part, scheduled for November 3, should also result in a rejection. The text would then go to the Senate in its initial version. Created by the 2025 budget for a single year, then renewed in 2026 with a higher threshold, the surcharge today targets companies with at least 1.5 billion euros in turnover and is calculated as a percentage of corporate tax.

Some 400 companies are affected, according to the government, which is proposing to extend it in 2027 with rates reduced by around a quarter, for a return reduced to 5 billion euros compared to 7.3 billion estimated this year. The vote also eliminates the return, at a reduced rate, of the exceptional contribution from large shipowners, which primarily affects CMA CGM. Revenue of 5 billion euros The surtax is a pet peeve of employers.

Its renewal, even “reduced from 7 to 5 billion euros, remains a bad signal”, judged Medef at the beginning of October, considering that it “weakens the word given and worries investors”. The government presented the rate cut as a way of “confirming the temporary nature” of the surcharge. But “from the moment it lasts more than a year, it is no longer an exceptional contribution at all,” retorted Marc Le Fur (Republican Right) during the session.

EPR MP Charles Sitzenstuhl denounced “a burden on businesses”. The left, which demanded the maintenance or even an increase in current rates, castigated “a majority of the central bloc allied with the National Rally which decided to increase the deficit by 5 billion”, in the words of LFI deputy Éric Coquerel after the vote on the amendments. Later in the evening, however, the deputies adopted, again by two votes (by 74 votes to 72) and against the advice of the government, a communist amendment.

It aims to tax multinationals on a share of their global profits proportional to the share of their turnover generated in France, in order to counter possible transfers of profits abroad. A measure “contrary to 125 bilateral tax conventions”, denounced the Minister of the Economy Roland Lescure during the session, which should also disappear from the final version of the budget.

Machine-translated from French