The French multinational Veolia has paid just €572 million in tax in the last five years and €2.7 billion since 2001, representing an effective taxation rate 10 to 12 points below the French tax rate, the Greens/EFA Group at the European Parliament states in a new report, published on Friday 27 October.
Each subsidiary of Veolia calculates its French corporate tax on a stand-alone basis and pays it to the parent company. This is “especially interesting when some companies within the group have tax losses, which can be offset against the tax profits of other companies”, the report states.
Losses of tax income stood at €3.6 billion in France in 2016. The net profits of the companies of the French group appeared to vary between €300 and €600 million a year. “This means that virtually any profit made by Veolia and its subsidiaries in France is not liable to tax the next 10 years or so”, the Greens/EFA Group writes.
The group also stresses that the way Veolia organises its accounting is perfectly in line with the 'parent/subsidiary'' directive. “It is completely unacceptable that a company has been able to trim more than half a billion euros off its tax bill in the last five years without breaking a single law”, French member Eva Joly said. (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer)