Europe 1 with AFP 6:28 p.m., August 30, 2022

Monday, before the Medef, the Prime Minister did not exclude taxing companies benefiting from "superprofits".

Tuesday, in front of the same audience, the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire nevertheless broke away from the words of Elisabeth Borne, saying that he did not know what a superprofit was.

"I don't know what a superprofit is," Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire told employers on Tuesday, while Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne did not rule out taxing them.

"I know that companies must be profitable, that's all I know," added the number two of the government in front of a conquered audience on the occasion of the REF, the Medef summer university.

Elisabeth Borne told Le

Parisien

on Saturday  that she did not want to "close the door" to taxation of the "superprofits" of companies, a claim from the left.

But she added that she would prefer that each company that can "lower prices for the consumer and give purchasing power to its employees".

In front of employers, Bruno Le Maire repeated that he had asked several companies that had made exceptional profits due to soaring energy prices or bottlenecks in transport or logistics "to alleviate the invoice of our compatriots".

>> READ ALSO -

 What to remember from Elisabeth Borne's speech to the Medef

"Taxing more means producing less"

"I know that Total, CMA-CGM (shipowner, editor's note), distributors, a number of other companies have already made efforts to redistribute what they have earned directly into the consumer's pocket", explained the minister. .

For Bruno Le Maire, "taxing more in France means producing less in France".

The president of Medef Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux had for his part judged Monday that "the biggest super profiteer", "is the State."

"Tax revenues for the first half of 2022 increased by 27 billion euros," he said.

Without denying this figure, Bruno Le Maire rejected his analysis: "We cannot be blamed on the one hand for spending too much to protect households and businesses and on the other hand telling us that we could have made profits in the matter".

"What I see is that when you lower the corporate tax rate, revenue increases, proof of the effectiveness of our tax policy," hammered the minister to applause.