UNDERSTANDING THE MECHANISMS OF TAX EVASION AND UNION ACTION TO FIGHT IT
The round table (available here in full video) was hosted by Thibault Quartier, co-founder and editor-in-chief from the media Le Trois, specialized in economic analysis of northern Franche-Comté. If you are concerned about tax injustice, if you want to understand everything about transfer pricing (the technique used by multinationals to lower their taxes), know the state of play in the fight against tax evasion and the role of unions on the subject, and in particular that of the CFE-CGC in the case of General Electric in Belfort, we invite you to watch it in full. She is fascinating.
The debates were introduced by François Hommeril, president of the CFE-CGC, from whom we take elements of the speech in the article dedicated to the film Tax Warsby Olivier Marcé, CFE-CGC union delegate at Nokia and member from the Reconstruction collectiveand by Olivier Laurent, president of the Metallurgy Franche-Comté CFE-CGC and member of the SMFC CFE-CGC union, co-organizer of the round table with Reconstruction.
“I am in a way the shepherd of a magnificent group of activists in freedom here in northern Franche-Comtéimagined Olivier Laurent. They are working to break this unfounded glass ceiling which separates those who know and those who do it, us the employees. » He thanked the CFE-CGC confederation for setting up training through the Confederal Training Center (CFS) to detect signals indicating suspicion of tax evasion. “This project aims to establish a fairer sharing of wealth and value, and to ensure the survival of our social model”summarized Olivier Laurent.
We reproduce below some extracts from the round table to give a taste of all the debates.
What is tax evasion?
“Tax evasion is something obviously camouflaged that we cannot assess with certainty but estimates for the French scope are around 200 billion euros per year, or 1.2 times the Defense budget . Those who have the capacity to commit large-scale fraud are the multinationals, since truly good large-scale fraud is carried out precisely through what we call transfer pricing. »
Maximilien Malbête
What is a transfer price?
“It’s the best way to defraud, the most effective, the one that leaves little chance of being caught. A transfer price is an intra-group transaction which can be a service price, a sale of goods, spare parts, anything physical, but also the provision of personnel, as long as this happens between two companies belonging to the same group. The aim is to transit – artificially, most of the time – a good or a service from one State to another, from one tax regime to another, by reducing or increasing the price of the service or good of such that there will be disfavor noted somewhere and favor in another place. For example, if France sells a good to Switzerland which will then sell it to a final customer, France will display a particularly low price, therefore its turnover will be low, its expenses will be high since it produced the well, and its accounting result will be very low. The amount of tax that will be paid will therefore be low. »
Maximilien Malbête
What is the difference between tax evasion and tax optimization?
“There is a legal difference between tax optimization and tax evasion. Tax evasion, in the same perspective as tax fraud, consists of violating the law which itself arises from international rules. Typical case of tax fraud, we voluntarily declare less than we earn. Tax optimization is legal, that is to say we take advantage of the gray areas of the law and international rules, for example by transferring our profits from a country with high taxes like France to a low-tax country like Switzerland or Ireland, by exploiting weaknesses in national and international rules to pay less taxes, more or less legally. In both cases, profits are hidden which are not taxed where the workers are, where production is located. »
Séverine Picard
Why is it important to fight tax evasion?
“One of the reasons why it is important to fight is that tax evasion consists of deteriorating the financial situation of the company, which gives employers an argument not to increase salaries and no longer invest. Secondly, this allows management to tell the social partners that their company is no longer competitive and that it will be necessary to relocate and eliminate factories and jobs. This is why the fight against tax evasion is an essential union fight, perhaps even the most important. »
Philippe Petitcolin
Is the action against General Electric an exception?
“Until now, this type of procedure is extremely rare. The public prosecutor’s offices do not take the initiative to control multinationals and we understand this well because you have a prosecutor, a substitute, who will attack a company of 170,000 employees equipped with an army of lawyers and services financial, so it’s very complicated. In history, I am only aware of one case where we really succeeded in obtaining a conviction, the one conducted with the CGT this time, where we obtained a conviction for tax fraud and laundering of tax fraud of 1.3 billion euros towards McDonald’s France. »
Eva Joly
Comments collected by Gilles Lockhar
