Tax on “superprofits”: Bercy wants to limit the debate to electricity producers

2024-03-25 19:30:35

Bruno Le Maire does not want to hear about tax increases. Faced with the slippage in public accounts, the Minister of the Economy swears by a reduction in spending – urgent and massive. However, he is ready to make a first departure from this dogma of fiscal stability, by extending for another year the tax on electricity producers – called “contribution on inframarginal rents” (CRIM).

Interviewed on BFM on Friday, Bruno Le Maire reiterated his opposition to taxation of companies’ “superprofits” next year… except for the energy sector. “There will be in this budget, as there was in 2023, a recovery of the rents which could have been made by energy companies quite simply because prices have soared,” explained the minister.

Dissensions in the majority

Bruno Le Maire makes this concession while debates, even within the majority, are increasingly heated on tax issues. Le Modem has long been an advocate of targeted increases (tax on share buybacks and superdividends, green ISF, etc.). Recently, many voices – starting with that of the President of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet – are singing a similar melody and calling on the government not to stick to its positions. Several Renaissance parliamentarians are considering introducing a bill themselves on the taxation of “super profits”.

To short-circuit these debates, Bercy therefore opens the door to a new exceptional taxation of electricity producers only in 2025. And even to its tightening. “I am completely ready for us to look at this inframarginal contribution to improve it and ensure that energy companies do not make rents from energy,” explained Bruno Le Maire this Monday on RTL.

A poorly designed tax

This remark echoes the strong criticism expressed by the Court of Auditors last week about the CRIM. The financial magistrates denounced the holes in the racket of the system, which allowed producers, distributors and intermediaries of the wholesale electricity markets to pocket 30 billion euros in profit margins thanks to the energy crisis – when the State only recovered 2.8 billion euros thanks to the CRIM in 2022 and 2023 (according to the latest estimates published in December by the government)… light years away from the 12.3 billion expected.

In its report, the Court of Auditors invited Parliament to “change the scope and methods of calculating the contribution on inframarginal annuities for 2024, in order to increase their yield”. Bercy seems in favor of toughening up. It remains to be seen by what means. Will it be a question of extending it to certain excluded sectors such as hydraulic reservoirs? To lower the thresholds characterizing the tax margins of different technologies? To increase the share of these excess margins taken by the tax authorities – initially set at 90% but reduced in 2024 to 50%?

Legal uncertainty

Whatever the lever, the measure is likely to be poorly received by electricity producers. Several of them have already, according to our information, filed an appeal before the Council of State last summer, denouncing the illegality of a system which goes far beyond the framework of the European regulation in which it was supposed to fit. . This only theoretically allowed Member States to cap the margins of energy companies from December 1, 2022 to December 31, 2023.

“The European Commission concluded in June 2023 that it was preferable not to extend the cap, because the system generated too much divergence from one country to another and could cause market disruption,” explains Sarah Dardour-Attali , associate lawyer at the CMS Francis Lefebvre firm, who recalls that an appeal was filed at European level by Belgian producers. “A preliminary question has been referred by the Brussels Court of Appeal to the Court of Justice of the European Union. Its decision could have an impact on the past and future application of capping measures in France.”